---
aliases:
  - Leslie Ronald Young
  - Jimmy Young
category: "Entertainment & Arts"
tags:
  - Person
summary: "Leslie Ronald 'Jimmy' Young was a veteran British broadcaster for BBC Radio 2, known for his show *The Jimmy Young Show*, which had a wide audience across England, Ireland, and Scotland."
born: 1921-09-21
died: 2016-11-07
location: "Cinderford, Gloucestershire, England"
---

Leslie Ronald "Jimmy" Young was a veteran British broadcaster for [[BBC Radio 2]], known for his show *The Jimmy Young Show*, which had a wide audience across England, [[Ireland]], and [[Scotland]][^1].

On November 23, 1973, Young conducted a live on-air experiment with [[Uri Geller]]. Young asked Geller to bend a large key. Geller concentrated, and encouraged listeners across the [[United Kingdom]] to summon their own [[Psychokinesis|psychokinetic]] powers and bend metal in their homes. Live on national radio, Young exclaimed, "It’s bending right in front of me, I can’t believe it!"[^1].

Following the broadcast, the [[BBC]] switchboard was inundated with calls from citizens reporting metal objects in their homes inexplicably bending, and watches restarting. This event, which the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] referred to as "secondary consequences," led many people across Great Britain to believe they had bent metal with their own minds[^1].

### Footnotes
[^1]: Jacobsen, Annie. *Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis*. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.