Malcolm Is a Little Unwell

Where to begin my story?

Fate has decreed that it shall be here,

in the middle of the Mediterranean.

We are currently sitting in international waters

about 20 miles or so north east of the Libyan capital Tripoli.

I'm on a boat that's being operated by

Medecins sans Frontieres and another NGO which is called

SOS Mediterranee.

Their role out here is to rescue migrants who come from Africa

predominantly and who leave through Libya.

Radio: Aquarius, boat number one

coming back with 18 persons.

We last some action six days ago

when the team on board rescued

107 West Africans.

This boat is

a surreal place to talk about

what happened to me.

I am not The Messiah

I am not The Messiah.

I'm a wise man.

But I think that it's the perfect metaphor in a way

because

ever since I left psychiatric hospital I have never ever been

this cut off from the rest of the world

as I am now.

This is about the same size

as the room I had

in the psychiatric hospital in Denmark when I had

some of the worst experiences of my life.

I feel extremely depressed

because I feel there as though there is no way out of here.

I'm a wise man!

My name is Malcolm Brabant.

I'm a veteran foreign correspondent.

Unlike most of my contemporaries

I don't have a team to produce my television reports,

I do it all myself.

I'm a one man band.

In 2011 I was the BBC's Athens correspondent,

covering the financial crisis, Greece's Great Depression,

and broadcasting to the world.

I was at the top of my game.

This is the 7th general strike

Greece has had in the past year.

It's been 12 months of austerity.

But not long after I shot this video I underwent a

terrible metamorphosis.

I am the wise man.

Protect me I am the wise man.

Jesus is coming to Greece to save Greece.

Come and protect me.

We are the wise people.

I know about technology,

I know what I'm doing.

I need your protection.

Life began to unravel at this clinic when I was given

a yellow fever vaccine called Stamaril,

made by a pharmaceutical giant, Sanofi Pasteur.

I always check things out so I had been on the

vaccine maker's website to read up on the vaccine.

Welcome to Sanofi

It was presented as perfectly safe and my husband didn't

tick any of the boxes where there might be a problem.

The nurse said I might experience something like flu.

But nothing worse.

Less than 18 hours after driving home I was burning up.

I sent him to bed.

And a little bit later I heard this banging from upstairs.

I thought it was the shutters being blown around by the wind.

I went upstairs to lock them down.

But as I entered our bedroom

I saw our king sized bed slamming up against the wall.

It was the fever that had gripped my husband's body.

He was shaking so violently,

I've never seen anything like it.

I sat in the sunshine eating oranges

to boost my vitamin C intake.

According to the vaccine maker

the flu like symptoms should have vanished within a few days,

but mine persisted.

My condition deteriorated.

Blood tests showed my liver was being affected

and I was admitted to hospital

under the care of a leading infectious diseases specialist.

Despite all the tests and all the medication,

the doctors just could not kill his fever

and they were becoming really worried

because such a high fever for such a long time

is life threatening.

I began to hallucinate especially at night.

After my e-book reader appeared to fly across the room,

I thought I was gaining supernatural powers.

He was becoming irrational and he was telling me weird things.

So I decided to use my iPod to film him,

to document what was happening to him.

The doctors eventually managed to kill his fever

by using steroids

but at this point my husband's mental state

had completely collapsed.

The house phone rang. It was Malcolm. Tormented.

Do you know who I am? He asked me.

Yeah, I said. I know who you are.

No. Do you know who I really am? I'm Jesus.

I was drawn to the cupola of a large church near the hospital.

This cross was telling me that I was The Chosen One.

He said, I'm going to fly with angels now.

My husband's room was on the 15th floor of the building

and there was a big window.

So I grabbed my mobile phone and kept him on the house phone

and I started texting this friend of ours

begging her to call the ward and ask nurses to check on him.

They ran into his room and found him on the windowsill praying.

I was admitted to this private

psychiatric clinic and locked up.

My religious fixation intensified.

I was convinced I was getting messages from good friends

who'd covered the siege of Sarajevo with me and had later

suffered tragic deaths.

Bill Frost, Chief Reporter of The Times of London,

killed by his drug addiction.

TV reporter Terry Lloyd

who gave me my first break in journalism,

shot by US troops in Iraq in 2003.

Reuters correspondent Kurt Schork

who made his name in Bosnia,

killed in an ambush in Sierra Leone's civil war.

And Times correspondent Danny McGrory, my closest friend.

When he died from a brain haemorrhage I was devastated.

They'd become my Guardian Angels,

preparing me for the Second Coming.

One day he phoned me and told me where he was,

that he was in the psychiatric hospital,

that he had to get out.

Quite calmly and with

quite a measured

sense of reason in his voice,

he explained to me that the truth had been revealed to him.

That he'd woken up that morning and his bed had been levitating.

That was the signal that confirmed what he'd suspected.

That he was The Messiah.

And he'd been put on earth for a purpose.

I assumed intelligence agencies had cameras in my room

and were now aware it contained a British citizen,

more important than the Queen, the Pope and the US President.

So I said to him, listen Malcolm.

I think you are having a nervous breakdown.

He listened to this quite calmly and said OK

I hear what you say,

but you'll find out soon that this is real.

That this is now happening to me.

It was a very reasoned calm exposition of what he believed

to be the truth and he didn't sound crazy or deluded.

He wasn't ranting or raving.

He sounded like his old self

and it was completely

wild.

The first few nights in the psychiatric clinic

were really rough.

On the very first night he thought there was a fire

so he grabbed his towels from the bathroom and wet them

and put them under the door in order to keep the smoke out.

There was no fire.

On another night he trashed his room completely.

He smashed up a guitar he had there.

The staff came very close to putting him in a strait jacket.

He was making a plan for this to be announced

to the world and for the world to get ready

for the revelation that he was The Messiah.

And he said some very flattering things about me

And then said so I've decided you are to be First Disciple.

I was part of the plan

so it got even more deluded.

It's really difficult to explain

precisely how my dead friends

got in touch with me when I was in hospital.

But it was almost like a kind of electronic buzz

and I felt really alive as if there was some sort of charge

being put through me and I used to see their faces

in my mind's eye and they would give me advice about how

I could prove to people that I was The Messiah.

There are lots of things I don't remember from

that period in hospital but I do distinctly recall

seeing Kurt's cackling face in my mind

telling me that I had to drink my own urine

and all the others joined in and laughed as well

and so I drank my own urine because I thought that was

one way to prove that I was Christ.

I've been averse to religion all my adult life.

An assignment to this monastery on Mount Athos

Greece's Holy Mountain was interesting

but it didn't trigger any spiritual awakening.

Yet one yellow fever vaccine later and I was adamant

the Second Coming had to be on television.

My all round technical skills and understanding

of international media made me the perfect choice.

The chief psychiatrist at the clinic assured me it was

an organic psychosis brought on by the yellow fever vaccine

and that it would eventually pass.

Hey listen you know it's OK, just relax.