"Divine Mother snubs Madonna. Not bad."
"She wasn't snubbed. Just had to go in with a hundred and sixty others on one of the four nights a week Mother Meera opens her home to the public. She sat in silence for a few hours, took her chance to bow down so Mother Meera could feel her head, then sat up and they looked into each other's eyes."
"This is your big story?"
"Madonna's music's changed. It's gone all spiritual. The Ray of Light's won great reviews. It's probably about Mother Meera, who says she's here to channel a new light from God to help the Earth's evolution. Frozen, the hit CD single from the album, is said to be about her."
"Madonna and sex was news. Madonna seeing the light - it's like the news story's over. Remember when Bette Middler went all kind and compassionate? I sat there bored as she simpered on, and wondered who'd snipped off her balls."
"When the Beatles took up Transcendental Meditation, flew to the foothills of the Himalayas to meet the Maharishi, newsreels were full of it."
"You remember the sixties?"
"Just about."
"Well forget 'em. For a start, it makes you too old. And the sixties are stale. They were about love. We're all about survival now."
"Ringo Starr's a survivor. He's been to see her. Mike Love of the Beach Boys is a follower."
"You're sweet. You know that? It's why I'm still at this table."
"Terence Stamp?"
"A sixties icon I'd still wet myself for, but pass�."
"He was a confidant of Princess Diana. They met at his apartment for tea whenever she was desperate. They must have spoken about Mother Meera after he visited her. Can't we do something with that? Diana and Mother Theresa passing so swiftly, one after another, the world's in need of a new female icon. Mother Meera could be that."
"Any more bright ideas?"
"Controversy. In February I gave a reading at the Lenox Hill Bookstore here in New York. Every seat filled, folk standing in the aisles, books locked away in the back room and forbidden to go on sale. A devotee of Mother Meera, a top trial lawyer she shares with Deepak, unleashed legal threats to prevent publication. You know the cost of defending anything in US courts? It took hours of meetings in the legal eyries of the publishing house, mock trials and inquisitions, before the book was finally released. Can't we use that? "What's she got to hide?" Run with that as a slogan."