Update - Acorah's psyc-hic jet rant

According to a response from Gwen Johnson to questions from Jon Donnis of BadPsychics, the Sun's story about Acorah being drunk on a flight from Alicante to Gatwick is totally untrue.

I wonder when both the Sun and Jenny Hurley will be appearing in court answering to to a defamation claim by Acorah? After all, according to Gwen Johnson either the former "embellished" the story - in which case, what story?? - or the latter is "is a total liar".

I won't be holding my breath ...

Acorah’s psyc-hic jet rant

By NICK PARKER and VIRGINIA WHEELER

FOUL-mouthed telly medium Derek Acorah spooked jet passengers by guzzling wine and ranting like a drunken plonker.
The psychic, 59, ROWED with his wife, SWORE at a woman with a crying baby and STOOD UP when seatbelt lights came on for the plane's landing at Gatwick.

Shocked Jenny Hurley, 34 said: "He had to be told to sit down, then he went really potty. He shouted, 'F*** Gatwick! What's England got going for it anyway?' "

The millionaire, who claims to talk to spirits on his show Derek Acorah, was on a Monarch flight from Alicante, Spain.

Jenny said: "He didn't seem to know where he was - and appeared drunk even before the plane took off. He started quarrelling with his wife in the row behind me, swearing and shouting. She wasn't pleased at him leering at a stewardess. When a child started crying he shouted, 'Is that your f****** baby?'"

Office manager Jenny, of Weybridge, Surrey, told how at one point his wife Gwen warned him: "Sit down Derek - you'll end up in the newspapers."

The Sky Real Lives star got off the plane "red in the face and unsteady on the feet".

Jenny later spotted him stumbling around the baggage hall. She said: "It was hilarious. For someone who is meant to be a psychic, he couldn't tell which bag was his."

Last night Acorah's agent said: "He was on antibiotics for a chest infection and had four little bottles of red wine. I can only assume that affected him in some way."


Copyright The Sun newspaper
Read more: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/2720015/Medium-Derek-Acorah-spooked-jet-passengers-by-guzzling-wine-and-ranting.html#ixzz0WNnmmP50

Acorah and Michael Jackson - "sick, sick, sick"

Six hundred thousand viewers saw Derek Acorah make the biggest mistake of his career when he tried to make contact with the spirit of Michael Jackson.

The reviews make more fascinating reading than the programme itself.

In a darkened country house in Ireland, a group of people are gathered round a table, staring at a hat.
It's not just any hat, though. It's a hat with residuality, according to Derek Acorah.
It's both a happy hat, and a sad hat, he reckoned, because it's Michael Jackson's old hat.
"Would you like to touch it?" he asked the four Jacko devotees beside him.
And they did. "I can't believe that's his hat," said one.
"It's amazing."
Yup. Incredible. But not quite as incredible as trying to speak to the recently dead on live telly (Michael Jackson: The Live Seance, 10pm, Friday, Sky One).
Sorry, did I say incredible? I meant gobsmackingly crass. I'm always mixing them up.
The hat was there to help summon Jacko's spirit. The hat, and the setting. The whole thing was staged in the house Michael rented to write his last album. The owner said he'd had the bedroom overlooking the playground.
And the fans' passion would help bring him back too, said Derek. Well, they certainly were passionate. Though some might say unhinged.
Anyway it all worked, this mix of residuality and passion. Or at least it did if you believe Acorah, a man thrown off Most Haunted for being possessed by a fictional character made up by one of the crew .
"He's with me," announced Derek, and one fan looked like she was about to levitate with joy.
They must have been quite chuffed in the production room too. In 2005, the late King of Pop couldn't even turn up on time for his trial.
How obliging of him to be punctual for Sky One.
So what did Jacko have to say?
Well, he wanted to be buried alongside Marilyn Monroe, apparently. And he's hanging out with his grandparents. He wanted to someone to say hello to Quincy Jones ("hello Quincy," said one of the fans, hesitantly), and he wished the tabloids would stop being spiteful.
"These journalists they all make lies up, lies up, lies," spat Derek. It wasn't exactly clear if he was being Jacko or himself at that point.
And then it was the fans' chance to speak.
So what did they ask, given a direct link to their idol?
A probing question about the nature of the afterlife, perhaps? Or something that would clear away the mystery surrounding Jackson's death?
No. "Do you realise how much I love you?" asked one chap, between fits of sobs.
"We'll make sure he's okay," promised host June Sarpong. Hmmm.
Easier said than done, June.
And that was pretty much that. Jacko-Derek had a bit of advice for one of the fans who worked as a tribute act ("you're 80% there, he wants you to get to 90%") and then he was gone, unceremoniously shooed backed into the never-neverland because Sky had scheduled Beverly Hills Cop III at 11pm.

The review from The Leicester Mercury raised this comment from an American fan:

"Please let this poor, gentle soul rest in peace. This kind of lunacy makes me sick because its just one more example of an attention seeking nut using MJs' memory. Knock it off! "

The Guardian wrote:

Michael Jackson: The Live Seance was car crash TV in the worst senseDerek Acorah show was in such bad taste that it couldn't be seen as entertainment on any discernible level

If you were watching Sky One on Saturday night, count yourself lucky - you saw what will easily be remembered as the worst single hour of television produced in 2009. Worse than Babestation. Worse than Channel Five's SuperCasino. Worse than any individual episode of Hotel Babylon. I'm talking, of course, about Michael Jackson: The Live Seance.

I was watching because I thought it'd be funny - a car crash of a show with the added bonus of a slimy-looking medium rolling his eyeballs around inside his bright orange skull and reciting the lyrics to Heal the World in a silly high-pitched voice.Turns out it was a car crash. But it was one of those actual car crashes where real people get hurt and you're not sure that everyone's going to make it out OK and you end up feel like a bit of bastard for even wanting to watch it in the first place.

This is how Michael Jackson: The Live Seance worked. Derek Acorah - he of Most Haunted and Derek Acorah's Ghost Towns fame - rounded up a group of Michael Jackson fans and took them to a house in Ireland that Jackson had stayed in a few years ago. Once there, he spent 20 minutes doing what he does best: trying to convince everyone that he was being inhabited by the ghost of a dead megastar.

And he was certainly very convincing. Because if you were Michael Jackson and you'd just been gifted an unexpected conduit into the world of the living for the first time since your death, you wouldn't use it as an opportunity to pass on some personal messages to your grieving children, would you? No, the first thing you'd do would be to give a shout out to your man Quincy Jones. Then you'd mutter darkly about journalists before mumbling endless variations of the word "love" a lot too. That definitely sounds like something that Michael Jackson would do. Can't see anything wrong with that.

Derek Acorah's shtick is offensive at the best of times, but the sight of him sitting at a table with four fans - including two who were literally dressed up as Michael Jackson and one who appeared to be on the brink of emotional meltdown throughout the seance - and doing his best to goad them all into crying on live television left an especially bad taste in the mouth. Acorah's manipulation of the vulnerable was in such bad taste that it couldn't be seen as entertainment on any discernible level. It was depressing. That's all it was.

In the coming years, Michael Jackson will be endlessly repackaged and commoditised by people with all kinds of vested financial interests, but I'll be staggered if anything even comes close to Michael Jackson: The Live Seance. That's unless Sky One secures the broadcast rights to Michael Jackson: The Live Corpse-Defiling any time soon. It wouldn't be that much of a leap.

It seems the show went down like a lead balloon, which is hardly surprising given the calibre of the 'medium'.

Articles copyright to their respective authors and publications

Psychic my arse!

Yes, fellow Scouser Ricky Tomlinson's character, Jim Royle, puts it so succinctly. Derek Acorah, doyen of fake psychics, has excelled himself in his "new" television show. Of course it's not new; simply a re-hash of the days at Granada Breeze where he began his television career all those years ago.



Impressive, isn't it?

Actually, it becomes a lot less impressive when you realise that the lady in the clip is known as Wanderer on the Talk Derek Acorah forum. Not only that, but she's been to numerous shows, and met Acorah in Nottingham, on the Acorah 'cruise' [actually, a North Sea ferry crossing], and on the organised trips to Spain and Torquay this year. She also had a reading from him just a short while prior to the recording. And here she is, photographed with Acorah ...

Note: all photographs are copyright the respective owners; programme clips are copyright Sky Real Lives. All are shown for the express purpose of criticism and review in accordance with the Fair Dealing Provision of the Copyright Act.

Of course this could be a one-off, couldn't it? After all, he can't remember everyone he meets, can he?

But then there's this reading ...



These ladies are the Thomas twins, Katie and Kelly, known as Ktwinz on the Talk Derek Acorah forum, who have followed Acorah for at least five years with the third member of the trio, Carol [Cazza on the Talk Derek Forum]. They even have customised suitcases labelled "Acorah's Angels on Tour" which they use while following him around Europe.

The two MySpace galleries show that all three have been photographed with Acorah many times and not just at shows here in the UK, but in Spain, on the Spirit and the Seas 'cruise', as well as at a Ghost Towns Live in Halifax - there are even some photos taken with Ray Rodaway, Acorah's driver/tour manager - who just happens to be the partner of Gwen Johnson/Acorah's daughter.

They are very good friends of Gwen Johnson/Acorah ...

... and with Linda Nichols who runs Derek Acorah's official fan club, and whose husband used to sell Acorah's front row theatre tickets on eBay ...

On the Torquay trip they all stayed at the same hotel as Acorah, Gwen, Linda, and other staff, but could Acorah have had prior knowledge of Katie's poetry? You bet! On the Talk Derek Acorah website she published one dedicated to Acorah [rhyming with surer!] on March 10 2007, four on December 2nd 2007, dedicated to her cousin, and one on March 30 2008.

Acorah knows all these ladies well - well enough to give them a lift from the theatre after a show - but on the programme does he even hint that he has ever seen them before? No, he doesn't, and that is dishonest, to say the least.

So those are the facts - make up your own mind about Acorah's honesty...

Emma Gee

The latest twist

It seems that the Supernatural World has removed the threads to which I referred in this blog, stating:

Having contacted North Yorkshire Police today I was advised that whilst certain allegations may well be true, publishing them on this board could be seen as malicious communication thus causing the victim to feel harrassed.

As one of the allegations was instigated by me, following the receipt of information that Wood has been sitting outside my house, taking photographs, I have decided to also remove my posts on the topic from this blog.

Wood has also removed most of the statement he had placed on his own forum, leaving just this tucked right at the bottom of the page, presumably as an appeal for sympathy. Sad.



Emma Gee

Government grant for psychics!

According to the Daily Mail newspaper a couple in South Wales have been awarded £4,500 by the Department of Work and Pensions to set up a scheme which "aims to train people to contact 'the other side'. ".

One of the 'clairvoyants' makes this astonishing claim:

'People who feel their tax money has been wasted should remember that if they'd lost a child they would go to a medium to get peace that their loved one has passed safely and is in a better place. Our job is to provide substantial evidence to bring ease to people's grieving.'

What is so disgraceful about the grant?

Put simply, it's illegal.
Consider this:

The Consumer Protection Regulations include rules prohibiting conduct which misleads the average consumer and thereby causes, or is likely to cause him to take a transactional decision he would not have taken otherwise.

Although the average consumer would arguably not be misled by a person who claims he is able to contact the dead, such conduct would still be unfair under the CPRs if it deceives the average member of (i) the group to which it is directed, or (ii) a clearly identifiable group of consumers who are particularly vulnerable to this type of practice.

Unlike the Act, there is no requirement in the CPRs to prove an "intent to deceive". This means that where practices are aimed at vulnerable consumers or average members of particular groups, it should be easier to take action against fraudulent mediums than under the Act.

The CPRs will be enforced by both civil (injunctive) action and criminal sanctions.

What type of person would be considered particularly vulnerable to individuals such as these? Precisely those identified by the couple as their target - the bereaved, and in particular, bereaved parents.

The aims of this couple are outside the law, and the Department of Work and Pensions have colluded with them. Shame on all concerned.

Emma Gee

... and there's more!

Last night, on Whitenoise Radio [see edit below], Derek Acorah claimed that Sam made himself known to him on a Sunday afternoon, when he was sitting in his mother's lounge with his family, and he went upstairs to his bedroom to talk to Sam.

In his own book The Psychic Adventures of Derek Acorah he says this:

"One evening I was at home alone. I had just completed my evening meditation and was sitting listening to some music. Suddenly I heard a voice saying, 'Hello, Derek.' This was repeated four times. Then the voice said, 'I'm Sam.' "

In his article for the Sun newspaper, he says this:

"Many years later, I was sitting in the lounge of my mum and dad’s house chatting with the family and all of a sudden I heard this man's voice saying 'Derek, Derek, it's Sam.'I left the lounge, ran to the upstairs loo and quietly said 'who is it?'. "

Which one is the lie - or is the whole episode fabricated. Remember, Acorah had nothing to do with the supernatural until he, in his role as security guard, looked after a friend's New Age shop in Liverpool.

On Whitenoise Radio Acorah claims his grandfather, Richard, died two and a quarter years before he was born in 1950, after a terrible accident at sea in an engine room blow-back, where he sustained terrible injuries to the lower half of his body.

It's not true!
If it was true, it would make his grandmother a bigamist, as she married Willem Verbaan on 11th January, 1944.

No, of course Acorah's grandmother wasn't a bigamist, despite his ridiculous claims trying to re-write history and big himself up! Richard Courtney died in Liverpool on 13 March, 1939, aged 37. After an inquest, the Coroner gave the cause of death as:

Septicaemia following injury to the right ring finger accidentally
caused on board ship at sea on the 23rd January last.


Draw your own conclusions - is Derek Acorah is a liar? You bet he is!

Emma Gee

Edited 28 March 2009 - the Whitenoise Radio interview has been removed ...

The Acorah life story - the latest, and sicker, version!

Yes, Acorah's done it again. He's revised his life story, and added a truly sickening piece of blatant self-promotion in an attempt to get bums on seats.

“When I was a very tender age, just six, I had my first spiritual encounter. I was in my gran’s very old Victorian house on the stairwell when my gran shouted me to come for my tea. As I got the final landing I heard a huge bang and turned around to see a big man standing in the doorway. He ruffled my hair and started to speak to me and said ‘tell your nanna that Richard says hello’.
Derek says that when he told his nanna about the strange encounter she got an old metal box of photos out of the cupboard and asked the youngster if he could spot the man he’d seen in any of the photos. He pointed him out.
But it wasn’t until three years later when Derek was nine that his family told him it was his grandfather Richard who he’d seen - a man who’d died before Derek was even born.

So, what did Acorah have to say about this on the Paul O'Grady ITV show, on 29 October 2004 ?

"I was about 6 when it first started, it had been passed through my family. My grandmother was a medium, then I was upstairs playing with my toy soldiers when in the doorway I saw a man and this man was my grandfather, Richard Acorah, who passed on to the lovely world of spirit a few years before I was born. So I ran down the stairs as fast as I could and told my mother and grandmother about what I saw, and then they said to each other, Derek Acorah is the next medium in our family!"

Hmmm... no big bang, and he wasn't on the stairs in the earlier version.

The new story continues:

“I had a major rethink and decided to go into business as a medium,” he said. “When I was at Liverpool FC some of the players knew I had the gift and their wives used to contact me to ask if they would have a baby, and when.”
Derek put an advert in the Liverpool Echo advertising his private readings and the rest, as they say, is history."

Yes, as I've said all along, Acorah started his 'psychic' career as a fortune teller, just like the ones you see on Blackpool's Golden Mile.

Then the interview turns sour.

“I have only spoke once to Emlyn since his passing. He still has to learn how to do it. He was absolutely chuffed because he said he’d met up with Shanks again over there and that he’d been trying to organise a spirit game.
“When I was in Barrow last time I was sending thoughts out to Emlyn but he didn’t make an appearance and then about five weeks later he contacted me at home. I went to the door and he was there smiling at me with his infectious grin. I cried actually afterwards.
“I talked about some family members with him and he said he was with his father and brother. I expect him to be there behind the curtains when I come to Barrow next week.”

How strange that this story has never surfaced until now, and as part of the publicity for his Barrow show! Surely at the time it happened Acorah would have told somebody in an interview, on radio, TV, a magazine article? But no! Check here. Nothing - not until three days before his show in Emlyn Hughes' home town.

That leads me to a conclusion I've reached over and over again about this man - that he is not just a liar, a cheat and a fraud, but a sick liar, cheat and fraud!

Emma Gee

BadPsychics gets Acorah to talk ...

The BadPsychics website has published an interview with Derek Acorah, and some of the replies to questions are interesting.

I chose the name "Acorah" as a working name because I liked it and it has a history within my family. BobDezon should remember that not all blood ties are recorded or researchable. I know that my family tree has been published on the internet. That is a gross instrusion of my family's privacy. It was particularly upsetting for my mother who, as an elderly and frail lady, was reminded of a long closed period of her past in the last years of her life.

Well! Where to start?

1. Acorah has consistently claimed that the name was that of his grandmother's first husband. As we all know, from public records, it wasn't. Nor was it the name of her second husband, either. Now the claim has slipped somewhat to become "it has a history within my family", which could mean whatever he wants it to mean.

2. If Acorah's family tree has been published on the internet then I've not been able to locate it during many years of research.

3. Acorah himself made public many details of his family in books, articles and interviews.

4. I have never published the details of any relative of Acorah who was still living. The identities of the dead are, once again, part of public records.

5. I find it difficult to believe that an "elderly and frail lady" discovered my website while surfing the net. I find it even more difficult to believe that had such a thing happened, she would have been "reminded of a long closed period of her past", as the only reference I made to her was in relation to her stepfather; "Willem Verbaan died at the family home in Bootle in 1965; his death was registered by Derek Johnson's mother"

************

Whether you choose to believe it or not, it is pure coincidence that Masumai is "I am u Sam" in reverse. Without today's penchant for "text speak", would anybody have even come up with that suggestion?

Since the early 17th century both iterate and illiterate people alike have scrawled I.O.U. on bits of paper, together with a sum of money borrowed. The suggestion that we waited for "text speak" to use the contraction is plain ridiculous, and smacks of desperation.

************

I just love Acorah's response to question ten, posed by 'Twistedme'.

" Can [you] expand further on your claims of a subterreanean race of people living under the streets and subways of London? What proof can you provide to support these claims and when will you be presenting this proof to the general population? "

Until the existence of the afterlife can be proved and understood by those who function on the earthly plane, it is impossible for a medium to provide the degree of tangible proof our society feels the need to see. Equally, and for exactly the same reason, a sceptic is unable to provide proof that a medium is wrong. When I conduct an investigation I speak about what I am receiving clairaudiently or seeing clairvoyantly. If what I have to say sounds ludicrous to the listener, then I am sorry but I can only interpret what I receive and relay it.

Ah! So, the answer's a no, then? What a surprise!

Emma Gee