Derek Acorah: 'Mary loves Dick!' - the video and the laughter

'Clairvoyant' Derek Acorah is trending on Twitter in the wake of his claim that Maddie McCann is in the spirit world. While sceptics rage and Spiritualists despair, here's Our Del in action on Most Haunted. Wait for Yvette Fielding at the end wetting herself over Derek's 'Mary loves Dick!' Even Derek has a laugh.

Hugh Grant, the former Screws hack and the haunted pub in Dover

The Castle Inn, Dover

It's certainly the most delicious media story of the year (to date). A major British actor bugs the hack who once bugged him. Their topic of conversation: illegal phone hacking. Part of the transcript of Hugh Grant's highly revealing taped conversation with former News of the World whistle-blower Paul McMullan is now online at the New Statesman website: click here.

Priceless nuggets include Andy Coulson's alleged complicity in phone hacking, the PM's unhealthy proximity to Rupert Murdoch moll Rebekah Brooks (who, as one witty Arcatiste has pointed out to me, looks more like Robert Plant every day) and how Murdoch wickedly plays his multi-media games with celebrity pawns - the Nicole Kidman/Moulin Rouge! tale is a thing of beauty.

Grant travelled to the Dover pub/hotel McMullan runs, The Castle Inn, where all was revealed; and he generously encourages readers to pay the establishment a visit. It sits on the corner of Dolphin Lane and Russell Street. Click here to read about the colourful history of the 18th century coaching inn: it is of course haunted, and the medium Derek Acorah will want to know about the 'creaks, icy blasts and apparitions' should he ever be called in for a spot of exorcism.

I only mention all this because I want to see Mr McMullan safe and secure in his new business, out of harm's way and solvent. He is a very important source for future scholars of the worst scandal ever to hit British newspapers. Long may he thrive.

Derek Acorah Holidays! Robbie Williams Approved!

The twat-lipped clairvoyant medium Derek Acorah – sacked even from Living’s ludicrous Most Haunted for charlatanism - has thought up another wheeze to make money from the living and the dead.

Now you can buy yourself “a spa break with Derek Acorah” for a “Spirits in the Sun” holiday. “Britain’s best known celebrity medium Derek Acorah will be appearing amidst a whole weekend of paranormal experts, at a renowned 4 star Spa hotel complex on the Costa Del Sol, Andalucia, Spain, [in November]” runs the brochure, click here for more. Well, the ear-studded fraud has to top up his leathery hide tan, I guess, to match the gold highlights in his gelled barnet (love to see the state of his pillows). Very cheekily and disingenuously, he boasts “conducting consultations” with various showbiz stars such as the likes of Robbie Williams. Oooh dear, that’s not wise …

Back in October 2005, The Times ran a fantastic interview with the Robster by Caitlin Moran. He told how he’d been so impressed by Acorah (presumably on Most Haunted) that he summoned him to his Chelsea Harbour penthouse for a psychic sitting. “However, when pressed by Williams to 'go on and do it' — contact the dead — Acorah came up with little more than what a search would yield on Williams’s dead relatives, albeit rendered in a blaze of peerlessly camp Scouse dramatics."

Robbie wisely ushered the psychic hustler out the door, but you can’t keep a professional con down for long. Soon Acorah was on the phone to Robbie trying to inveigle him into doing a Living TV show oblivious of the fact that Robbie has only to fart and ABC would be on the line. Then Acorah invited Robbie to a dinner with him and his pal ... Uri Geller – that too was met with a polite non-attendance. The piece continues:

“I thought, I’m not talking to you, you ****ing idiot. You’re outside the circle of trust. Next thing I know,” Williams says, rattling his belt buckle with his knuckles in a surge of nervous energy, “he’s promoting a DVD in a double-page spread in the Daily Mirror, going “Yeah, I got (contacted on ‘the other side’) Robbie’s nan. And when Robbie’s in America, his friends watch my DVD. Robert de Niro, Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman.”

Robbie does a face of scandalised boggling.

“I’VE NEVER MET THEM!” he shouts, slowly, as if communicating with a deaf idiot on the other side of the Thames. “I DON’T KNOW DUSTIN HOFFMAN! And hang on a minute — YOU’RE ALSO SELLING A DVD USING MY DEAD NAN!" Robbie sighs.

Do read the whole of the interview, one of the best celebrity media encounters I have ever read. Click here

Most Haunted: Was Derek Acorah stitched up?

I am most impressed that Radio 4's religious affairs show, Sunday, this morning got through an item on Living TV's Most Haunted without mentioning the name Derek Acorah. This is the series that sees its presenter/producer Yvette Fielding screaming her way through spooky castles and inns, and Acorah was its resident Spiritualist medium, who turned the show into such a hit with his hysterical "channellings", but who was exposed as a charlatan in 2005 and fired.

Why would Sunday's Roger Bolton choose to ignore the fact of Acorah and the implication of his exposure that Most Haunted was and is predicated on fraudulence? Why draft in the statutory sceptics (psychologists, clergy) to balance the show's claims (that famous BBC fair play thing) and not mention the potential coup de grace in Acorah?

Curiously, Acorah was exposed as a faker by Most Haunted's resident parapsychologist Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe (who's still with the show). He set Acorah up by giving him made-up names of characters whom the medium then purported to communicate with in trance. One of these characters was Rik Eedles, a fictional highwayman - a name which turned out to be an anagram of Derek Lies.

Why would the show decide to test its famous medium when anyone with an ounce of sense could see from the word go that he was just acting? Put another way: Why would the show look a gift horse in the mouth? At the heart of all this is ego. It had become an open secret that Fielding and Acorah couldn't stand each other - Fielding, a talented TV performer, leaves no one in any doubt that she's the star of the show. By 2005 Acorah was The Star. If you look at DVD copies of the show, the mugs of Acorah and Fielding share the covers. Then at some point around 2005, there's just the one mug - Fielding's, with her sexy neo-blonde look and those great infra red-friendly boggle eyes staring out in studied apprehension.

My own information leads me to believe that Acorah was stitched-up to get shot of him - Fielding and the entire crew knew he was just delivering an entertainment - and he was cramping her style. Dr O'Keeffe acted honestly in testing the clairvoyant, but what other result could there be once you apply a bit of scientific methodology to a hoax? Would any of Fielding's mediums pass the O'Keeffe test? Come on, sue me and we'll test them all in court.

Fielding's on the publicity trail at the moment to promote a new Acorah-less series. One journalist I know asked her about Acorah and she simply said she wasn't talking about him. Odd that. What an opportunity for her to say something along the lines: "We are an authentic paranormal show - look, we got rid of Derek!" Instead, she was happy to reveal that she planned a Most Haunted special with the Dingles from the TV soap, Emmerdale - "It'll be in a really spooky place somewhere in Europe and it'll be so camp," she said. Ah, yes: camp. That sums the show up really. That's showbiz!

PS For more on Yvette Fielding and her fakery see Bad Psychics.

Acorah is a con, says "ghost"

No one can quite put on a show like the Spiritualist medium Derek Acorah. His Living TV fans can't get enough of his donkey impersonations as yet another dead castle proprietor takes possession of Acorah's vocal chords. When he was on Most Haunted, his spirits' fury was usually aimed at the wild-eyed host Yvette Fielding - and with reason. She and Acorah couldn't abide each other.

Now I hear that someone else has fallen out of love with the hair-gelled mystic. Back in 1998 fellow medium and author John G Sutton "ghosted" the book The Psychic World of Derek Acorah for the medium. The book was reissued last year - but with Sutton's name missing as "co-author". What could have happened?

Over to Sutton. He recalls Acorah of the late '90s as a sensitive man, someone he respected. But no longer. He writes in Psychic World: "To the best of my knowledge he had no connections with the Spiritualist Church and was never a member in the accepted use of that term. Yet in various press interviews Acorah makes the false claim that he trained in Spiritualist Churches and is indeed a Spiritualist Medium, which is something he most certainly has never been."

Of Acorah's psychic hysterics on TV Sutton says: "People watching this twaddle may, unfortunately for Spiritualism, actually think that the man is really channeling a spirit entity through trance-mediumship. The way he fakes it makes the very idea appear ridiculous ....

"Nor have I ever seen any evidence from Derek Acorah that he can channel spirit. What I have seen amounts to a ludicrous charade played out for the benefit of the cameras in the name of making a TV show."

So no more Acorah ghost gigs for John then.