Wizard will meet council committee

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34044, 7 January 1976, Page 12

Wizard will meet council committee

The Wizard will not levitate when he has an audience with the Christchurch City Council’s cultural committee on January 26 — but he hopes councillors are prone to levity.

Like any pressure group seeking council action, the Wizard will come armed with submissions to continue his pursuit of the honorary title “Archwizard of Canterbury.”

He said he would “continue his present programme

of stirring up ideas and stimulating emotions in a carefully controlled manner.”

The British Commonwealth, he said, had a precedent for local authorities officially recognising a somewhat - debatable position. During the 19605. the City of Vancouver appointed an official Fool. “The Fool was not a university intellectual qualified to lecture in cosmology,” the Wizard said, “nor was he living an entirely non-serious lifestyle, and he appears to have had little interest in religion or aesthetics.” Christchurch, he suggested, i could draw up duties for an

official Wizard “of a lawful and constructive nature.”

Postcards and posters of the Archwizard as a “priceless masterpiece” belonging to the Robert McDougall Art Gallery and regularly on exhibition throughout Christchurch “would be very popular with tourists since there is no other individual on Earth with such skill in surviving all attempts to be put down.”

The present fast-increasing debt incurred by the City Council, and “their increasing unpopularity and lack of colour,” could all be corrected by appointing an official Wizard,