The Wizard of Noz

New Zealand has an official Wizard. Until yesterday, when Ian Brackenbury Channell was given the sack by the city of Christchurch. 

You can understand NZ's desire to embrace wizardry; after all, their Australian neighbours have their very own Wizard - of Oz. In 1990, Prime Minister Mike Moore proclaimed Channell the Official Wizard of New Zealand, appointed to “protect the Government, cast out evil spirits and upset fanatics”. In other words, New Zealand's Alistair Campbell.

Channell describes himself as an "educator, comedian, illusionist and politician", although he basically travels the country casting spells and mixing potions. He must have cast a spell on the Christchurch city councillors, who decided to pay him $16,000 p.a. to "provide acts of wizardry and other wizard-like-services – as part of promotional work for the city of Christchurch".

Rod Liddle, that unreconstructed anti-wokeist and Sunday Times columnist, writes today that Chiristchurch's act has "aroused fury among occultists" although given Channell is 88 years old it could just as easily be his fellow octogenarians who are up in arms. One man who will surely be delighted is Ari Freeman, who is the Wizard's Apprentice and, with a bit of corporate smooching, could take over this lucrative contract. Freeman is known around Christchurch and beyond as the front man of the psychedelic funk band Rhomboid. Despite all this weirdness, their stuff has a certain magical [gettit?] charm:

I could find no record of any other country or city having a wizard on the payroll, although the Ku Klux Klan has its Grand Wizard. I'm willing to provide wizard services for St Austell, for a small fee of course.