Azrael 5
10th November 2005, 04:00 PM
A bit late with this so apologies if its been mentioned somewhere.Ally Ross TV critic for The Sun has this to say about Most Haunted Guy Fawkes special.
GOBBY continuity announcers. Loud adverts. Coldplay background music. Thick football pundits. Any show with "Swap" in the title.
There's a lot of stuff on telly it's very easy to dislike.
But nothing gets my goat quite like the psychic smarm-buckets who've taken over the outer reaches of our TV universe.
A fact which brings us to Living TV. And its star turn. The phenomenon who calls himself Derek Acorah.
A "spiritualist medium," is Derek.
A man who undeniably looks like Andy Bell out of Erasure and has many close friends in the afterlife.
Though none close enough to tell him he's too old for hair highlights and ear studs.
But no matter. Because if you haven't seen Pakora (a name easier to swallow) in action, then an explanation is in order.
Guided by his 2,000-year-old Ethiopian spirit friend, Sam, former Liverpool footballer Derek possesses powers which could collectively be defined as — horse crap.
Psychometry, divination, channelling. Gifts that, to an untrained eye, look remarkably like guesswork, lying and repeating stuff he's just read off the internet.
However. Suspend your disbelief for a second.
As worldly or unworldly, these "gifts" produced remarkable results on Living's Quest For Guy Fawkes.
A two-hour TV attempt to make contact with the gunpowder plotter's spirit.
And a journey that saw Derek beaming with sincerity as he finally got through to "the other side" and revealed Guy Fawkes to be ... "a motivated man with a beard."
But not just that. His prison cell was also "a small place" and when they chopped his goolies off at his execution Guy Fawkes felt — no sh*t — "anger" and "unhappiness."
As I said. Remarkable.
Though you could be forgiven for missing the real feebleness of Derek's spiritual insights because of the deranged performance that accompanied it. Much of this act involved the usual conman's tricks, flattery, repetition, misdirection, etc.
However, as the spirits allegedly took hold he also began twitching, looked constipated, went into pretend spasms, squeezed one out, regained consciousness. And finally started barking like a feckin' mad man channelling his own reviews.
"It may sound crazy," said Derek, sounding crazy. "But I've got this stench surrounding my whole psychic body."
Not crazy, Derek. Very plausible.
And also laughable.
Or it would be, if this wasn't 2005 and his medieval mumbo-jumbo wasn't swallowed whole by thousands of vulnerable, lonely people every week. A few "of these, of course, are also naive fools who'd believe Dot Cotton's arse had launched a first strike nuclear assault on Tehran if you told them manically enough.
But whatever the exact audience combination, they've bought Derek his Southport mansion (you don't think these gifts come free do you?) and made Living TV a success.
And because multi-channel TV has no conscience, that success means the psychic pox is spreading.
Already we have psychic channels, psychic pets and psychic detectives. And it'll go mainstream now, 'cos frauds like Derek can keep peddling this compost until the cows come home.
Mind you, last time I saw him channelling away madly on QFGF, Derek was outside the Tower Of London complaining that: "My head feels like it's being squashed for some reason."
So I can't pretend my own psychic messages weren't getting through to him.
NOTE - better details of Derek Acorah's alleged methods are detailed on websites like badpsychics.com.
Love it! Im going to borrow part of this for my sig.;)
GOBBY continuity announcers. Loud adverts. Coldplay background music. Thick football pundits. Any show with "Swap" in the title.
There's a lot of stuff on telly it's very easy to dislike.
But nothing gets my goat quite like the psychic smarm-buckets who've taken over the outer reaches of our TV universe.
A fact which brings us to Living TV. And its star turn. The phenomenon who calls himself Derek Acorah.
A "spiritualist medium," is Derek.
A man who undeniably looks like Andy Bell out of Erasure and has many close friends in the afterlife.
Though none close enough to tell him he's too old for hair highlights and ear studs.
But no matter. Because if you haven't seen Pakora (a name easier to swallow) in action, then an explanation is in order.
Guided by his 2,000-year-old Ethiopian spirit friend, Sam, former Liverpool footballer Derek possesses powers which could collectively be defined as — horse crap.
Psychometry, divination, channelling. Gifts that, to an untrained eye, look remarkably like guesswork, lying and repeating stuff he's just read off the internet.
However. Suspend your disbelief for a second.
As worldly or unworldly, these "gifts" produced remarkable results on Living's Quest For Guy Fawkes.
A two-hour TV attempt to make contact with the gunpowder plotter's spirit.
And a journey that saw Derek beaming with sincerity as he finally got through to "the other side" and revealed Guy Fawkes to be ... "a motivated man with a beard."
But not just that. His prison cell was also "a small place" and when they chopped his goolies off at his execution Guy Fawkes felt — no sh*t — "anger" and "unhappiness."
As I said. Remarkable.
Though you could be forgiven for missing the real feebleness of Derek's spiritual insights because of the deranged performance that accompanied it. Much of this act involved the usual conman's tricks, flattery, repetition, misdirection, etc.
However, as the spirits allegedly took hold he also began twitching, looked constipated, went into pretend spasms, squeezed one out, regained consciousness. And finally started barking like a feckin' mad man channelling his own reviews.
"It may sound crazy," said Derek, sounding crazy. "But I've got this stench surrounding my whole psychic body."
Not crazy, Derek. Very plausible.
And also laughable.
Or it would be, if this wasn't 2005 and his medieval mumbo-jumbo wasn't swallowed whole by thousands of vulnerable, lonely people every week. A few "of these, of course, are also naive fools who'd believe Dot Cotton's arse had launched a first strike nuclear assault on Tehran if you told them manically enough.
But whatever the exact audience combination, they've bought Derek his Southport mansion (you don't think these gifts come free do you?) and made Living TV a success.
And because multi-channel TV has no conscience, that success means the psychic pox is spreading.
Already we have psychic channels, psychic pets and psychic detectives. And it'll go mainstream now, 'cos frauds like Derek can keep peddling this compost until the cows come home.
Mind you, last time I saw him channelling away madly on QFGF, Derek was outside the Tower Of London complaining that: "My head feels like it's being squashed for some reason."
So I can't pretend my own psychic messages weren't getting through to him.
NOTE - better details of Derek Acorah's alleged methods are detailed on websites like badpsychics.com.
Love it! Im going to borrow part of this for my sig.;)