Stranger Than Fiction

My brother suffered a disease for almost fifteen years.

Last year he visited a healer in Brazil who identified his unusual condition without asking any questions, and without my brother saying a single word. She cured him, on the spot, and then told him his illness was the result of a curse, which she had now removed.

My brother is a businessman, and not at all the type to believe in curses. But, after visiting this healer, his horrid condition, which returned after surgery and resisted all medicines, vanished, and hasn’t recurred.

So, maybe the healer was right -- he had been cursed, perhaps at the behest of an old girlfriend or business rival. If an explanation was needed, this was all he had. But still, he was sceptical.

My brother lives in northern Italy where, until yesterday, the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, was being shot. Production has now halted amid fears of a curse.

And my brother’s name is James…

Crikey!