Tosser.

He has just been posessed, and re-enacted the ghost sustaining a stomach injury in the course of a play. He flounced round the stage, as if fencing (more accurately, as if fencing with a feather duster in gay cabaret), before acting as if he’d just been run through (again, possibly by a feather duster etc). The Ghost told him, via Sam the ethiopian spirit guide of course, that he lost his life in the theatre. The caption at the bottom of the screen confirmed that the actor with the similar name to the ghost identified actually died in hospital 4 weeks later. Still, not bad for a first stab (apologies for the pun)

Part 2, and Derek is detecting various psychic presences. Apparently the theatre is rife with poltergeist activity. Other than race riots, that’s the only sort of activity that actually occurs in Oldham!

He’s just identified the spirit of someone… gave a long physical description of this spiritual being (nice trick). Sadly, there is no record at all of anyone with that name. Ah well, it filled up 5 minutes of air time.

Well, there’s a bloody shock. He has detected a male presence, and worked out that they used to work in a mill. Lancashire is full of mill towns, so i think this is a ridiculously broad suggestion. It’s like saying “ooh… he had a good nature, but could get a bit angry at times.” Apparently, he used to make rude noises. I do that. If I die, I am going to haunt the hell out of Accorah, and terrify him with ghostly guffs!

And now we have switched to night vision. No idea why- it’s obvious that Yvette Fielding can see the peroxide pillock, so I guess the lights are still on.

Oh this is just shite. OK, had enough now. They aren’t spirit activity… they are bits of dust floating about. And the fact that a folding theatre seat falls down means nothing either. Other than the fact I have spent 30 minutes of my life watching this pile of toss, and that is time I will never get back!

Just remembered something from the last episode of this twoddle I endured. They had a ouija board session… always amusing… and the spook confessed to being gay. After that, they decided that he fancied one of the guys there. It was like you had a group of 12 year old kids trying to think of things to ask.

Sorry. I don’t know where that came from- I must have been posessed.

Medium. Spiritualist. Charlatan. Fraud. Thief. Manipulator. Can we see any thread to link these words together?

Just in case you have not worked it out yet, I am a bit of a sceptic about the ability of certain people to communicate with the dead. This scepticism comes from the fact that the claim is absolute shite, and is a method of extracting money from people’s need for comfort following the loss of a loved one.

Anyone who has seen the episode of South Park where Stan uses cold reading to illustrate the fact that John Edward is not actually getting his information from the dearly departed will understand this point. These people are skilled at using sweepingly general, but apparently specific, comments to get the dupe to tell him things about a dead relative.

Having just watched the hilarious “Best of British Mediums”, it is so apparent to anyone who isn’t blinkered by their own desire to hear that their dead mother that these people are spouting possible details like a scattergun of shite! A three-tiered theatre, full of willing believers, and some numpty at the front asking if the name Olive means anything at all…

What are the chances?!

The greatest, or worst, of these parasites on tv today has got to be Derek Acorah. This bleach-blonde scouser (for my own sake, I need to emphasise that is not meant as an insult) came to public attention on Most Haunted, in which he seems to do his best to be Fred in the Scooby-Do cartoons. Guided by Sam, Derek’s Ethiopian spirit guide, Acorah goes round old buildings detecting the ghosts of people who have died centuries ago. All well and good, especially as there’s no real way of giving watertight proof as to whether this ghost is anything other than a steaming mound of turd.

Just to check details, I have been to the official website. I can not do justice to the section on Sam, so here is the link. Read it, and I dare you to keep a straight face: http://www.derekacorah.org/about_sam.htm Interestingly, Sam speaks bloody good english for a 2000 year old African fella. Lucky for us!

If you do go to his website, it is also worth having a look at the gift shop.

Now, through tenuous connections which are not worth explaining, Derek Acorah once gave me a reading. I don’t have the precise quote, but to paraphrase he said “I know you aren’t going to believe me, but you are not enjoying your work. You will travel and work abroad.”

Well, magically, he wasn’t entirely wrong. I didn’t believe a word of it. As for the rest, however, I loved my job, and still do. Unfortunately for Sam & Derek, my work is also so limited in jurisdiction, that I couldn’t even travel to Scotland and work, and I haven’t been to another country for over 10 years. All told, you’ve not really hit the bullseye there skipper!

There are a load of sites dedicated to the inaccuracies in Most Haunted, and i can’t be arsed repeating them. Just 2 points though. If a ghost from the 16th century, for example, were to talk/communicate/play charades to communicate, it would be like reading an original Shakespeare script. The English language has changed greatly in the last 200 years, so if Derek was actually posessed we would need a high school English literature teacher to explain what the chuff he was on about.

It is also worth noting, and I was told this by someone who worked on the production team of the show, that Acorah only ever became “posessed” if Yvette Fielding or one of the other herberts on the programme were getting more camera attention than him.

All told, I find the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man in Ghostbusters more believable!