Post by lozwinter on Aug 28, 2005 12:13:29 GMT
www.politics.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1556060,00.html
He was signed for Liverpool by Bill Shankly but it was downhill from then on - until a voice called to him from the other world. Now Derek Acorah is reborn as a medium. His message may be a bit garbled but, Charles Nevin discovers, as he tags along with him from seance to TV studio, no one much cares
Modern, detached, paved front, conservatory behind; inside, big suite, Capo di Monte, gilt mirror, carriage clock, Chinese rug. Not modest, but not that flash, either, although there are electric gates and four cars on the paved front: old Jaguar, people mover, Chrysler sports car, old Triumph sports car under a cover. Who lives in a house like this?
It's a good question. I think we can agree that his first name is Derek. But there is dissent about his surname. And even more about what it is that he does. He is undoubtedly a star of nonterrestrial television, and he definitely fills theatres wherever he goes. He calls himself "Britain's finest professional spirit medium". Others, though, think there are a number of oxymorons in that description.
I announce myself to the intercom at the gate, and it opens by itself. The front door opens and there, in fashionably distressed jeans, is Derek Acorah, 55, the artist of the other world formerly known as Derek Johnson.
How are you with mediums - or should that be media? I have always thought them raffish, rather preposterous figures, like Coward's Madame Arcati, or, a particular favourite, Henry Squales in Norman Collins's London Belongs To Me: you know you should strongly disapprove, but you can't help a sneaking admiration for the cheesy chutzpah of it, for the strength necessary to impose their vision, false or no, on others; a sneaking admiration for either the brazen effrontery of the fraud, or for the courage to ride the derision. Do you remember Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry, the charming false preacher prophet who might not be quite so false after all? It's the same kind of thing.
We will talk to Derek, at home, near Southport, Lancs, about many things, known and unknown, including those mysterious spirits Kreed Kafer and Rik Eedles; but first let's have a look at him in action. Let's go to the Torbay leisure centre, in Paignton, where, for the third evening, they are making and showing Most Haunted Live.
You haven't heard of Most Haunted Live, and its sister programme, Most Haunted? Most Haunted Live is the jewel of Living TV, the cable channel, Britain's Sixth, as it likes to be known, fast growing home of a beguilingly contemporary entertainment mix of the gay, the cosmetically surgical and the spooky.
There's a big studio audience here in Paignton tonight, around 500. Mostly twenty- and thirtysomethings, more women than men. Living TV has given the paranormal a bit of a zap, a bit of an upgrade. The seance has been taken out of the parlour and sent on location. An Everywoman investigator, neither committed nor sceptical, but very prepared to be scared, is played to perfection by Yvette Fielding, former Blue Peter presenter (she used to look after Bonny, the golden retriever), who co-owns the programme's production company and roams the country's most allegedly haunted places with her faithful film crew, night vision equipment, and Derek.
Yvette fearfully goes into castles, dungeons and cellars, scenes of past apparitions and dreadful deeds. She jumps and gasps and feels oppressed. Derek sees and hears the spirits that are doing this, and sometimes gets possessed. Back in the studio, a hired historian sits among books, checking Derek's spirits against fact and legend while a hired sceptic remains sceptical, and the audience loves it.
Derek is the model of the modern medium. None of the dark, saturnine presence and stately delivery for Derek. Soft Scouse for Derek. He used to play football for Liverpool when he was called Johnson, and looks like it. Derek dresses like a footballer, and bears an unsettling resemblance to Kevin Keegan.
We leave the audience doing Mexican waves and make our way to Torbay's most haunted place, Berry Pomeroy Castle. The castle's ruins stand stark against the night sky. I am taken up to the guardroom, where Yvette is waiting, and Derek, who, as usual, we are told, doesn't know where he is.
It is pitch dark. They start a seance. Yvette begins to feel oppressed, and more oppressed. Derek begins to feel possessed, and more possessed. There is some man called Ralph or Thomas bothering him. Derek is carried out by a paramedic. I stand there and feel nothing. It's not that I don't want to; it's just that I'm clearly not very susceptible to this sort of thing. I once spent the night alone in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds and felt nothing there, either, except for a slight twinge near the Jack the Ripper reconstruction.
Back in the control room the show is coming to an end. Some two million have been watching. Highlights have included Yvette collapsing and a television monitor switching itself off. There have been 6,000 text messages sent in; some of them are running along the bottom of the screen: "Arron in New Jersey says there's a black mist moving up the dungeon stairs ... Darren from Birmingham says his candle blew out too ... Lynn and Kev from Grantham say their cats and dogs are acting strangely ... Has a horseman died in the east wing? Many have emailed to say they can smell and hear horses ..."
And now Derek is getting possessed again. "He's the money at the moment. Here he goes!" says the director. "My baby, my baby, I'm sorry," says Derek. Derek is apparently possessed by a woman, but his voice doesn't achieve the full feminine effect one has been led to expect by the mediums of the past. Whether this makes him more or less convincing, I'm not quite sure. "My father made me do this. My father has made me kill my baby. He made me slay my baby!"
The historian in the studio thinks this refers to a story I will read about later in the castle guidebook, about Lady Margaret Pomeroy, imprisoned by her jealous sister, made pregnant by her father, later strangling the child. Derek comes out of his trance in time for the big finish, a reprise of the travails of Yvette and Derek. Back in the studio, the audience happily mill around; some are convinced, some less so, but it doesn't really seem to matter. It reminds me of attitudes to another popular television activity: if Private Eye didn't proscribe it, I'd agree with those who say ghosts are the new wrestling.
There is a party back at the hotel to wind down from the three days of shooting. I have a chat with one of the hired sceptics. Matthew Smith is a lecturer in parapsychological research at Liverpool Hope University and doesn't think anything happened that can't be explained in terms of normal physical phenomena. But, as he puts it, "It gets a bit monotonous saying that I doubt him all the time." Indeed.
Derek comes over, red-eyed and clearly knocked about a bit by whatever it is he has been doing. He says he has encountered "worse negativity" tonight even than on Pendle Hill, legendary haunt of the Lancashire witches. He agrees to the interview at home at a later date. "Can I just ask you one thing, Charles?" he says. "Just keep an open mind." Done, I say.
You see, going back to the wrestling comparison, I'm not sure how seriously anybody takes this. When I arrive at Croydon's Fairfield Halls on a Thursday night for An Evening With Derek Acorah, try though I do, I can't find any sad souls hoping for contact with a dead child; they all seem to be there for a good night out. Well, that's not strictly true: there are quite a few husbands and partners who've been dragged there by their wives and partners. These range from the indulgent to the scathing, as best represented by Tom, an inspector on the buses with the traditional robustness of his calling. But then there's Bob and Jackie, from Epsom, who would quite like to know how their previous partners are. And a lot of people have had odd experiences that they would quite like, you know, to be paranormal ones because it's interesting and makes them interesting.
There are 1,500 people here tonight: Derek is only one of a group - a manifestation? - of mediums currently on the theatre circuit.
The lights go down, the music booms. Derek gives himself loud synthesiser music, flashing lights and a transatlantic voice-over welcome. If you've never been to one of these evenings, let me explain. The living are out front. The dead seem to form a queue stage right. Derek is assisted by his spirit guide, Sam. Summoning up hazy recollections of Native American guides like Red Cloud and Running Water, you might think Sam a rather prosaic name for a spirit, but it is, in fact, Derek's Scouse way with Masumai, who is, or was, an Ethiopian with whom Derek shared a past life.
Anyway, the form is that the dead, either on their own or through the offices of Sam, announce themselves. There is then a hushed, anxious time as Derek attempts to find out if there's anyone in the audience prepared to acknowledge a connection - this tends to take a while.
First up was Mrs Curtis, five foot four or five, mother of five, or six, or seven, first name perhaps Linda, or perhaps wanting to talk to someone called Linda, died after slipping into a coma. And Reg is involved, too. After a bit, someone has a father-in-law called Reg who was one of seven, or eight or nine, but she doesn't know Mrs Curtis, so that's no good. Then another woman knows a Mrs Curtis who herself was from a big family, and she seems to be the one.
Mrs Curtis, says Derek, is worried that one of her family has an incurable illness and wants the audience member to tell her. This bit of verbatim dialogue will give you a flavour of Derek:
'Um, can I say to you, please, the reason why she's come here is because knowing, OK, might not be a family member close but she understood that someone's connected or knows the family. There's a likelihood, OK? You say no if that's not so. But there's the likelihood that you would cross the path or see that family that she comes from?'
Audience member 'In the future maybe.'
Derek 'OK, well, whatever. Can I say to you please she's making me aware, she's showing me healing colours and what that means is that's only one of two things. That around the links with the family she's concerned, this lovely spirit lady, she's concerned, that someone is not just out of sorts, not just out of colour, but is hurting ... Sorry for going on about this but, there's not a health condition linked very close to you ... at this moment?'
AM 'Yes, there is. I suffer from chronic depression.'
Derek: 'You do?'
AM 'Yes.'
Derek 'OK, well I'm going to say to you, please, she's a very kindred lady. She hasn't come basically over your depression ... I feel someone has got a condition that she feared might not be corrected or cured.'
AM 'Yeah.'
Derek then gets a message about someone called John, which turns out to be the middle name of the audience member's brother, who has a package of money, obtained not from "any ill deed", and is going to be celebrating.
Other spirits who arrived in Croydon included Marion and Fred Smith, although Fred didn't say anything, and a dog that had belonged to Paula, who had an aunt called Marion Smith but didn't know Fred. And the dog had been black, but now seemed to be brindle. And James Collins, who had been a docker and who Julie thought might be her grandfather, and who wanted us to know there was going to be heavy snow around Christmas.
And that was about it. I wouldn't say I was bored, but I wasn't particularly gripped, either. I certainly wasn't prepared for all the people queueing to see Derek afterwards, and for all the women posing with him while their partners took pictures on their mobiles. Tom the bus inspector was not one of them: "If you throw a dart 20 times, you'll hit the dartboard eventually." Three girls posed with Derek. My mind went back to Mr Squales, the fictional medium, and his way with the ladies. I asked the girls about Derek. No, they said, they didn't take it seriously. And Derek, they said, giggling, was "a bit of a psychic hunk".
A few weeks later, I spoke to the audience member. She couldn't find the Curtis family, with whom she'd lost touch, but she did feel better herself. And her brother had been given a package that week, a birthday present from his grandson. She said she thought there was something in the healing, but she wasn't so sure about the rest of it.
So: that's Derek. What you might call, I suppose, a bit of a postmodern psychic. He doesn't seem to be terribly good, but that doesn't really matter, because those of his audience who don't want to believe in it want to be in on it: it's fun, and thus not quite so threatening. There is another world, though, a world where they take Derek and Yvette very seriously and have no truck with such 21st-century conceits. Yes, in cyberspace, there are people who very definitely don't believe in Derek. They are clear that he is making it up as he goes along. They mention the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951. If it was still in vogue, they would use the c-word: charlatan.
Derek has inspired a website: badpsychics.co.uk. Endless detail is given of Derek getting his history and dates in a twist during his possessions in these haunted places he's supposed to know nothing about. In Torbay, for example, he tried out the Berry Pomeroy stuff on the first night, too, at the wrong location.
In cyberspace, they post results of researches which suggest Acorah is not, as Derek says, the surname of his psychic grandmother, the one who set him on his path; no, they say Acorah may well be derived from Achor, another name for the devil. Crikey.
Derek says the confusion over his name is because his grandmother was married twice. Which was fine until I re-read one of Derek's bestsellers, which itself seemed to confuse the grandfathers. A mistake, said Derek. I called the man who was Derek's, erm, ghostwriter. John G Sutton is a professional clairvoyant and features editor of Psychic World (no jokes, please). Sutton couldn't help me over the grandfatherly confusion, but he did feel able to tell me that Derek was faking on Most Haunted Live. Derek, he said, was very psychic, which meant he could pick up on "vibrations" or "auras", and even get glimpses of the future; but he definitely couldn't communicate with "discarnate entities" from the other side. On this side, Sutton and Derek weren't communicating, either; disputes over money and a contract, said Sutton; all settled, said Derek.
Then there are the other names, the ones I told you about earlier, of two of the spirits identified by Derek on Most Haunted: Kreed Kafer and Rik Eedles, which I'm sure you will already have identified as anagrams for Derek Faker and Derek Lies. The suggestion is that someone on the production team ill-disposed towards Derek is feeding him duff info. And there's the smoking gun or, perhaps more aptly, the silver bullet: a recording of production chatter from Torbay which seems to feature Derek being told, admittedly inadvertently, that Berry Pomeroy is the next venue.
Was I amazed by all this? Not really. But I was interested to see what Derek had to say about it, at his home, near Southport, which he shares with his second wife, Gwen, not too far from his old home, where he lived with his mother and grandmother and played football for Bootle Boys, and came to the attention of Bill Shankly.
He did have help. In a match against Huyton Boys, aged 10, a voice told him to take over in goal and then to take the equalising penalty. This is from Derek's book, The Psychic World Of Derek Acorah: "As I walked back into the dressing room, I heard the voice again: 'You were brave, son, you acted with courage. Whenever you need us, we will be with you. You will never walk alone.'"
Uncannily prescient, too, as, according to my researches, this was some time before that last became the Liverpool anthem.
Derek did not make it at Liverpool: Shankly let him go. His career took him to Wrexham, Glentoran, Stockport County and Australia, before, back home, he encountered Shankly again, in a spiritualist church in Lancaster, via a medium, when "The Boss" came through to tell him he would score more goals in his new career than he had ever done at Liverpool.
We got on to The Boss again in Southport when we were discussing Derek's vision of the next life. Derek said that you could choose where to live, who to see, and what to do. I wondered if you could go and see a great football match, and Derek said, "Absolutely!" He said he was in touch with Shankly: "I know for a fact, because I have communication with him and some other coaches, that he's running football teams over there." Stanley Matthews, another great hero of Derek's, was also coaching and, said Derek, The Boss was not too happy "because Stanley Matthews has got the best sides over there!"
The other side, according to Derek, if I may paraphrase, is ordered by a hierarchy of advanced souls who had lived many lives. At its head is a supreme being. Everyone is reincarnated, but they can choose to live on the other side for a time before being reborn. Everyone has a spirit guide, but some, like mine, are kept farther back, and less obviously busy, than Sam.
The ones who come back to visit, reassure or warn loved ones are the ones who tended to worry about that sort of thing when they were alive. I wasn't to worry about my dad not bothering: "Honestly, there are a lot who get told, hey, it's only a matter of time before your son Charles will be joining you and you've got the opportunity to personally greet him and once they know that because there's no time over there, and the time goes so quickly here, a lot of parents and grandparents say I'm not that worried about coming because I know I'll join up with Charles anyway." Thanks, Dad.
Had Derek seen it for himself, over there? He had, in his quiet times, when he was meditating. He had seen bungalows, and terrace houses, but he had never seen a highrise flat. People chose to live where they had been happiest, you see.
I wondered why the spirits in Croydon had seemed to have difficulty getting through. Derek said my night at Croydon had been one of the weaker nights; what tended to happen was that if you got a spirit who had been nervous and shy during his or her life, they would be nervous when they came forward now. Nine times out of 10 they wouldn't know whether the loved one they wanted to contact would be there, which was why they had to settle for friends, or friends of friends.
I wondered about the dog, and the snow. Dogs, said Derek, were poor communicators, so when they tried to come into the atmosphere, they tended to be a bit distorted, or the wrong breed. As for the snow, there were Great Halls of Understanding over there where our lives are charted from minute to minute, so the souls can go and have a little look, if they like.
I turned to more practical matters, like the allegations about Most Haunted. Derek said they were the work of maybe 50 individuals who seemed to be pursuing a vendetta: "I feel we might have a few little frustrated souls here who would dearly wish to be in the public eye ... They've been asked to give proofs, send it to tabloids, to put their money where their mouth is, and they haven't done it."
As for the history in a twist, Derek said spirits were not just tied to the one room, or even place, they would come and visit when a medium was around. And the date confusions? "That to me is not so important as a communication and what has been said. I'm sorry, I'm not a historian. I haven't got a library of knowledge, I'm just an ordinary guy, OK, that uses the gifts of what I do, and whatever comes through, I don't check it ... I just say it as it comes, with conviction." The conversation suggesting prior knowledge of Berry Pomeroy never happened, he said, "but I'll stand accountable for that if it's so ... " I found his response to the anagram accusations particularly interesting. He didn't have a convincing explanation, but, despite my offering him the opportunity twice, didn't go for the obvious get-out, that evil spirits were playing tricks on him. I began to think, you might say naively, that whatever was going on, Derek seemed to believe it, or to have convinced himself about it, what you might term the Archer-Aitken Effect.
How else do you explain the rampant barminess of the snow forecast, the Shankly football matches and the lack of highrises in heaven? Or his aside that priests in plain clothes are in those queues afterwards and tell him to keep up the good work?
For its part, Living TV can't explain the anagrams, while absolutely denying that they were a plant by any of its team. It is, said a spokeswoman, "a real testament to how significant the paranormal has become culturally, that there are people who spend so much time trying to discredit the show, particularly with such tenuous evidence." Quite. I even had a call from someone purporting to be a member of the Most Haunted production team who said that Derek had been sacked for turning it into a laughing stock. Whatever, Derek is still in it, and is also getting his own Living TV series.
I left Derek after he had shown me his trophy room, with posters and gifts from fans; after he had told me, without obvious metaphor-awareness, that he contributed to a guide dog charity (and hadn't told me that all profits from his merchandise go to charity); after he had told me that I'd been positively vetted by Sam; and after he had confidently predicted Liverpool's extraordinary, even spooky, Champions League triumph. We'll have to wait to see if it snows at Christmas.
He was signed for Liverpool by Bill Shankly but it was downhill from then on - until a voice called to him from the other world. Now Derek Acorah is reborn as a medium. His message may be a bit garbled but, Charles Nevin discovers, as he tags along with him from seance to TV studio, no one much cares
Modern, detached, paved front, conservatory behind; inside, big suite, Capo di Monte, gilt mirror, carriage clock, Chinese rug. Not modest, but not that flash, either, although there are electric gates and four cars on the paved front: old Jaguar, people mover, Chrysler sports car, old Triumph sports car under a cover. Who lives in a house like this?
It's a good question. I think we can agree that his first name is Derek. But there is dissent about his surname. And even more about what it is that he does. He is undoubtedly a star of nonterrestrial television, and he definitely fills theatres wherever he goes. He calls himself "Britain's finest professional spirit medium". Others, though, think there are a number of oxymorons in that description.
I announce myself to the intercom at the gate, and it opens by itself. The front door opens and there, in fashionably distressed jeans, is Derek Acorah, 55, the artist of the other world formerly known as Derek Johnson.
How are you with mediums - or should that be media? I have always thought them raffish, rather preposterous figures, like Coward's Madame Arcati, or, a particular favourite, Henry Squales in Norman Collins's London Belongs To Me: you know you should strongly disapprove, but you can't help a sneaking admiration for the cheesy chutzpah of it, for the strength necessary to impose their vision, false or no, on others; a sneaking admiration for either the brazen effrontery of the fraud, or for the courage to ride the derision. Do you remember Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry, the charming false preacher prophet who might not be quite so false after all? It's the same kind of thing.
We will talk to Derek, at home, near Southport, Lancs, about many things, known and unknown, including those mysterious spirits Kreed Kafer and Rik Eedles; but first let's have a look at him in action. Let's go to the Torbay leisure centre, in Paignton, where, for the third evening, they are making and showing Most Haunted Live.
You haven't heard of Most Haunted Live, and its sister programme, Most Haunted? Most Haunted Live is the jewel of Living TV, the cable channel, Britain's Sixth, as it likes to be known, fast growing home of a beguilingly contemporary entertainment mix of the gay, the cosmetically surgical and the spooky.
There's a big studio audience here in Paignton tonight, around 500. Mostly twenty- and thirtysomethings, more women than men. Living TV has given the paranormal a bit of a zap, a bit of an upgrade. The seance has been taken out of the parlour and sent on location. An Everywoman investigator, neither committed nor sceptical, but very prepared to be scared, is played to perfection by Yvette Fielding, former Blue Peter presenter (she used to look after Bonny, the golden retriever), who co-owns the programme's production company and roams the country's most allegedly haunted places with her faithful film crew, night vision equipment, and Derek.
Yvette fearfully goes into castles, dungeons and cellars, scenes of past apparitions and dreadful deeds. She jumps and gasps and feels oppressed. Derek sees and hears the spirits that are doing this, and sometimes gets possessed. Back in the studio, a hired historian sits among books, checking Derek's spirits against fact and legend while a hired sceptic remains sceptical, and the audience loves it.
Derek is the model of the modern medium. None of the dark, saturnine presence and stately delivery for Derek. Soft Scouse for Derek. He used to play football for Liverpool when he was called Johnson, and looks like it. Derek dresses like a footballer, and bears an unsettling resemblance to Kevin Keegan.
We leave the audience doing Mexican waves and make our way to Torbay's most haunted place, Berry Pomeroy Castle. The castle's ruins stand stark against the night sky. I am taken up to the guardroom, where Yvette is waiting, and Derek, who, as usual, we are told, doesn't know where he is.
It is pitch dark. They start a seance. Yvette begins to feel oppressed, and more oppressed. Derek begins to feel possessed, and more possessed. There is some man called Ralph or Thomas bothering him. Derek is carried out by a paramedic. I stand there and feel nothing. It's not that I don't want to; it's just that I'm clearly not very susceptible to this sort of thing. I once spent the night alone in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussauds and felt nothing there, either, except for a slight twinge near the Jack the Ripper reconstruction.
Back in the control room the show is coming to an end. Some two million have been watching. Highlights have included Yvette collapsing and a television monitor switching itself off. There have been 6,000 text messages sent in; some of them are running along the bottom of the screen: "Arron in New Jersey says there's a black mist moving up the dungeon stairs ... Darren from Birmingham says his candle blew out too ... Lynn and Kev from Grantham say their cats and dogs are acting strangely ... Has a horseman died in the east wing? Many have emailed to say they can smell and hear horses ..."
And now Derek is getting possessed again. "He's the money at the moment. Here he goes!" says the director. "My baby, my baby, I'm sorry," says Derek. Derek is apparently possessed by a woman, but his voice doesn't achieve the full feminine effect one has been led to expect by the mediums of the past. Whether this makes him more or less convincing, I'm not quite sure. "My father made me do this. My father has made me kill my baby. He made me slay my baby!"
The historian in the studio thinks this refers to a story I will read about later in the castle guidebook, about Lady Margaret Pomeroy, imprisoned by her jealous sister, made pregnant by her father, later strangling the child. Derek comes out of his trance in time for the big finish, a reprise of the travails of Yvette and Derek. Back in the studio, the audience happily mill around; some are convinced, some less so, but it doesn't really seem to matter. It reminds me of attitudes to another popular television activity: if Private Eye didn't proscribe it, I'd agree with those who say ghosts are the new wrestling.
There is a party back at the hotel to wind down from the three days of shooting. I have a chat with one of the hired sceptics. Matthew Smith is a lecturer in parapsychological research at Liverpool Hope University and doesn't think anything happened that can't be explained in terms of normal physical phenomena. But, as he puts it, "It gets a bit monotonous saying that I doubt him all the time." Indeed.
Derek comes over, red-eyed and clearly knocked about a bit by whatever it is he has been doing. He says he has encountered "worse negativity" tonight even than on Pendle Hill, legendary haunt of the Lancashire witches. He agrees to the interview at home at a later date. "Can I just ask you one thing, Charles?" he says. "Just keep an open mind." Done, I say.
You see, going back to the wrestling comparison, I'm not sure how seriously anybody takes this. When I arrive at Croydon's Fairfield Halls on a Thursday night for An Evening With Derek Acorah, try though I do, I can't find any sad souls hoping for contact with a dead child; they all seem to be there for a good night out. Well, that's not strictly true: there are quite a few husbands and partners who've been dragged there by their wives and partners. These range from the indulgent to the scathing, as best represented by Tom, an inspector on the buses with the traditional robustness of his calling. But then there's Bob and Jackie, from Epsom, who would quite like to know how their previous partners are. And a lot of people have had odd experiences that they would quite like, you know, to be paranormal ones because it's interesting and makes them interesting.
There are 1,500 people here tonight: Derek is only one of a group - a manifestation? - of mediums currently on the theatre circuit.
The lights go down, the music booms. Derek gives himself loud synthesiser music, flashing lights and a transatlantic voice-over welcome. If you've never been to one of these evenings, let me explain. The living are out front. The dead seem to form a queue stage right. Derek is assisted by his spirit guide, Sam. Summoning up hazy recollections of Native American guides like Red Cloud and Running Water, you might think Sam a rather prosaic name for a spirit, but it is, in fact, Derek's Scouse way with Masumai, who is, or was, an Ethiopian with whom Derek shared a past life.
Anyway, the form is that the dead, either on their own or through the offices of Sam, announce themselves. There is then a hushed, anxious time as Derek attempts to find out if there's anyone in the audience prepared to acknowledge a connection - this tends to take a while.
First up was Mrs Curtis, five foot four or five, mother of five, or six, or seven, first name perhaps Linda, or perhaps wanting to talk to someone called Linda, died after slipping into a coma. And Reg is involved, too. After a bit, someone has a father-in-law called Reg who was one of seven, or eight or nine, but she doesn't know Mrs Curtis, so that's no good. Then another woman knows a Mrs Curtis who herself was from a big family, and she seems to be the one.
Mrs Curtis, says Derek, is worried that one of her family has an incurable illness and wants the audience member to tell her. This bit of verbatim dialogue will give you a flavour of Derek:
'Um, can I say to you, please, the reason why she's come here is because knowing, OK, might not be a family member close but she understood that someone's connected or knows the family. There's a likelihood, OK? You say no if that's not so. But there's the likelihood that you would cross the path or see that family that she comes from?'
Audience member 'In the future maybe.'
Derek 'OK, well, whatever. Can I say to you please she's making me aware, she's showing me healing colours and what that means is that's only one of two things. That around the links with the family she's concerned, this lovely spirit lady, she's concerned, that someone is not just out of sorts, not just out of colour, but is hurting ... Sorry for going on about this but, there's not a health condition linked very close to you ... at this moment?'
AM 'Yes, there is. I suffer from chronic depression.'
Derek: 'You do?'
AM 'Yes.'
Derek 'OK, well I'm going to say to you, please, she's a very kindred lady. She hasn't come basically over your depression ... I feel someone has got a condition that she feared might not be corrected or cured.'
AM 'Yeah.'
Derek then gets a message about someone called John, which turns out to be the middle name of the audience member's brother, who has a package of money, obtained not from "any ill deed", and is going to be celebrating.
Other spirits who arrived in Croydon included Marion and Fred Smith, although Fred didn't say anything, and a dog that had belonged to Paula, who had an aunt called Marion Smith but didn't know Fred. And the dog had been black, but now seemed to be brindle. And James Collins, who had been a docker and who Julie thought might be her grandfather, and who wanted us to know there was going to be heavy snow around Christmas.
And that was about it. I wouldn't say I was bored, but I wasn't particularly gripped, either. I certainly wasn't prepared for all the people queueing to see Derek afterwards, and for all the women posing with him while their partners took pictures on their mobiles. Tom the bus inspector was not one of them: "If you throw a dart 20 times, you'll hit the dartboard eventually." Three girls posed with Derek. My mind went back to Mr Squales, the fictional medium, and his way with the ladies. I asked the girls about Derek. No, they said, they didn't take it seriously. And Derek, they said, giggling, was "a bit of a psychic hunk".
A few weeks later, I spoke to the audience member. She couldn't find the Curtis family, with whom she'd lost touch, but she did feel better herself. And her brother had been given a package that week, a birthday present from his grandson. She said she thought there was something in the healing, but she wasn't so sure about the rest of it.
So: that's Derek. What you might call, I suppose, a bit of a postmodern psychic. He doesn't seem to be terribly good, but that doesn't really matter, because those of his audience who don't want to believe in it want to be in on it: it's fun, and thus not quite so threatening. There is another world, though, a world where they take Derek and Yvette very seriously and have no truck with such 21st-century conceits. Yes, in cyberspace, there are people who very definitely don't believe in Derek. They are clear that he is making it up as he goes along. They mention the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951. If it was still in vogue, they would use the c-word: charlatan.
Derek has inspired a website: badpsychics.co.uk. Endless detail is given of Derek getting his history and dates in a twist during his possessions in these haunted places he's supposed to know nothing about. In Torbay, for example, he tried out the Berry Pomeroy stuff on the first night, too, at the wrong location.
In cyberspace, they post results of researches which suggest Acorah is not, as Derek says, the surname of his psychic grandmother, the one who set him on his path; no, they say Acorah may well be derived from Achor, another name for the devil. Crikey.
Derek says the confusion over his name is because his grandmother was married twice. Which was fine until I re-read one of Derek's bestsellers, which itself seemed to confuse the grandfathers. A mistake, said Derek. I called the man who was Derek's, erm, ghostwriter. John G Sutton is a professional clairvoyant and features editor of Psychic World (no jokes, please). Sutton couldn't help me over the grandfatherly confusion, but he did feel able to tell me that Derek was faking on Most Haunted Live. Derek, he said, was very psychic, which meant he could pick up on "vibrations" or "auras", and even get glimpses of the future; but he definitely couldn't communicate with "discarnate entities" from the other side. On this side, Sutton and Derek weren't communicating, either; disputes over money and a contract, said Sutton; all settled, said Derek.
Then there are the other names, the ones I told you about earlier, of two of the spirits identified by Derek on Most Haunted: Kreed Kafer and Rik Eedles, which I'm sure you will already have identified as anagrams for Derek Faker and Derek Lies. The suggestion is that someone on the production team ill-disposed towards Derek is feeding him duff info. And there's the smoking gun or, perhaps more aptly, the silver bullet: a recording of production chatter from Torbay which seems to feature Derek being told, admittedly inadvertently, that Berry Pomeroy is the next venue.
Was I amazed by all this? Not really. But I was interested to see what Derek had to say about it, at his home, near Southport, which he shares with his second wife, Gwen, not too far from his old home, where he lived with his mother and grandmother and played football for Bootle Boys, and came to the attention of Bill Shankly.
He did have help. In a match against Huyton Boys, aged 10, a voice told him to take over in goal and then to take the equalising penalty. This is from Derek's book, The Psychic World Of Derek Acorah: "As I walked back into the dressing room, I heard the voice again: 'You were brave, son, you acted with courage. Whenever you need us, we will be with you. You will never walk alone.'"
Uncannily prescient, too, as, according to my researches, this was some time before that last became the Liverpool anthem.
Derek did not make it at Liverpool: Shankly let him go. His career took him to Wrexham, Glentoran, Stockport County and Australia, before, back home, he encountered Shankly again, in a spiritualist church in Lancaster, via a medium, when "The Boss" came through to tell him he would score more goals in his new career than he had ever done at Liverpool.
We got on to The Boss again in Southport when we were discussing Derek's vision of the next life. Derek said that you could choose where to live, who to see, and what to do. I wondered if you could go and see a great football match, and Derek said, "Absolutely!" He said he was in touch with Shankly: "I know for a fact, because I have communication with him and some other coaches, that he's running football teams over there." Stanley Matthews, another great hero of Derek's, was also coaching and, said Derek, The Boss was not too happy "because Stanley Matthews has got the best sides over there!"
The other side, according to Derek, if I may paraphrase, is ordered by a hierarchy of advanced souls who had lived many lives. At its head is a supreme being. Everyone is reincarnated, but they can choose to live on the other side for a time before being reborn. Everyone has a spirit guide, but some, like mine, are kept farther back, and less obviously busy, than Sam.
The ones who come back to visit, reassure or warn loved ones are the ones who tended to worry about that sort of thing when they were alive. I wasn't to worry about my dad not bothering: "Honestly, there are a lot who get told, hey, it's only a matter of time before your son Charles will be joining you and you've got the opportunity to personally greet him and once they know that because there's no time over there, and the time goes so quickly here, a lot of parents and grandparents say I'm not that worried about coming because I know I'll join up with Charles anyway." Thanks, Dad.
Had Derek seen it for himself, over there? He had, in his quiet times, when he was meditating. He had seen bungalows, and terrace houses, but he had never seen a highrise flat. People chose to live where they had been happiest, you see.
I wondered why the spirits in Croydon had seemed to have difficulty getting through. Derek said my night at Croydon had been one of the weaker nights; what tended to happen was that if you got a spirit who had been nervous and shy during his or her life, they would be nervous when they came forward now. Nine times out of 10 they wouldn't know whether the loved one they wanted to contact would be there, which was why they had to settle for friends, or friends of friends.
I wondered about the dog, and the snow. Dogs, said Derek, were poor communicators, so when they tried to come into the atmosphere, they tended to be a bit distorted, or the wrong breed. As for the snow, there were Great Halls of Understanding over there where our lives are charted from minute to minute, so the souls can go and have a little look, if they like.
I turned to more practical matters, like the allegations about Most Haunted. Derek said they were the work of maybe 50 individuals who seemed to be pursuing a vendetta: "I feel we might have a few little frustrated souls here who would dearly wish to be in the public eye ... They've been asked to give proofs, send it to tabloids, to put their money where their mouth is, and they haven't done it."
As for the history in a twist, Derek said spirits were not just tied to the one room, or even place, they would come and visit when a medium was around. And the date confusions? "That to me is not so important as a communication and what has been said. I'm sorry, I'm not a historian. I haven't got a library of knowledge, I'm just an ordinary guy, OK, that uses the gifts of what I do, and whatever comes through, I don't check it ... I just say it as it comes, with conviction." The conversation suggesting prior knowledge of Berry Pomeroy never happened, he said, "but I'll stand accountable for that if it's so ... " I found his response to the anagram accusations particularly interesting. He didn't have a convincing explanation, but, despite my offering him the opportunity twice, didn't go for the obvious get-out, that evil spirits were playing tricks on him. I began to think, you might say naively, that whatever was going on, Derek seemed to believe it, or to have convinced himself about it, what you might term the Archer-Aitken Effect.
How else do you explain the rampant barminess of the snow forecast, the Shankly football matches and the lack of highrises in heaven? Or his aside that priests in plain clothes are in those queues afterwards and tell him to keep up the good work?
For its part, Living TV can't explain the anagrams, while absolutely denying that they were a plant by any of its team. It is, said a spokeswoman, "a real testament to how significant the paranormal has become culturally, that there are people who spend so much time trying to discredit the show, particularly with such tenuous evidence." Quite. I even had a call from someone purporting to be a member of the Most Haunted production team who said that Derek had been sacked for turning it into a laughing stock. Whatever, Derek is still in it, and is also getting his own Living TV series.
I left Derek after he had shown me his trophy room, with posters and gifts from fans; after he had told me, without obvious metaphor-awareness, that he contributed to a guide dog charity (and hadn't told me that all profits from his merchandise go to charity); after he had told me that I'd been positively vetted by Sam; and after he had confidently predicted Liverpool's extraordinary, even spooky, Champions League triumph. We'll have to wait to see if it snows at Christmas.