The magic is gone: New Zealand removes its official magician | Today | DW

New Zealand loses its official battlefield, a comedic 88-year-old character with a long white beard and a pointed hat that has become a popular tourist destination in Christchurch (East).

The city council announced that it would provide services of this strange quality, and since 1998 it has paid over $ 11,000 annually for “contributing to witchcraft and other witchcraft services” to the community.

For more than three decades, this 88-year-old man, known as Ian Brackenbury Chanel, walked the streets of this city with his beard and hair, a long black coat and a sharp hat.

He addressed people with very different activities: punishing politicians, stopping the project of painting the city’s red phone booths blue, or writing spells to hold a rugby match.

Witchcraft no longer applies to the “advertising landscape”

“Concluding the deal is a difficult decision,” said Lynn McClelland, deputy mayor of the city.

But witchcraft no longer applies to the “advertising landscape” of New Zealand’s largest southern island city, where new projects “reflect diverse communities and show a vibrant, diverse and modern city,” he said.

“It was a meeting of bureaucracy they never imagined,” the guide told the Stuff news website.

The British-born man, a former member of his country’s air force, arrived in Christchurch in 1974 and began delivering his bizarre public speeches.

The authorities’ first reaction was to arrest him, but his reputation soared that when he threatened to leave ten years later, the council put him on hold and declared him a “Christchurch witch.”

In 1990, Prime Minister Mike Moore officially named him “New Zealand’s Warlock”.

Some (AFP, Defender)