But do stop me if you've heard these Derek Acorah predictions before
'If we can't trust our spiritualist mediums," wonders OK! magazine, "who can we trust?" Richard Nixon? Jeffrey Archer? The fabulist love child of Baron M�nchhausen and Heather Mills?
I'm afraid it's unclear. Naturally, the magazine is moved to make the inquiry in the wake of claims that the psychic Sally Morgan is fed names and personal details about the audience via radio link during her live shows. However, the debate serves primarily as a hook for one of OK!'s annual set pieces: Halloween predictions for the world of showbiz. Our seer? Why, it's nightvision charlatan Derek Acorah!
As you will know, Derek is a self-styled "medium" whose day job is giving vulnerable people messages from their dead children and so on. But every year, he breaks off from these lucrative endeavours and his TV filming schedule to cast his third eye over the business of show. The Greeks called it slebomancy ? picking though magazine entrails to divine what the future holds for our foremost stars of unscripted programming.
Derek is out of the traps with a corker. "Cheryl and Ashley Cole will be back together," he explains. "They will have a child. She will come back to him full time." Mm. If this feels vaguely familiar, it's because Derek predicted it last year ? and I suppose you could say he had a tiny measure of entirely coincidental success in that Ashley was snapped at Cheryl's birthday party, while a brief reconciliation of sorts seems to have taken place between the singer and Chelsea left-back.
Other prophesies? "Katie Price will end up in therapy," Derek declares. Again, a bell is ringing, so let us return to the sacred text of last year's predictions for the Pricey. "Just after Christmas," our hero sympathised then, "she'll lose it in public and need therapy at the deepest level." Who knows how madam manages to avoid bending to Derek's psychic will, but she does. Similarly, we have yet to collect on Derek's assurance that Victoria Beckham was going to become "a Princess Di figure" in the year just gone by ? but you have to say he doesn't let his failures beat him.
Indeed, this year Derek seems keen to expand into making apocalyptic predictions about the environment, which he has obviously identified as a growth sector. "There will be massive, cataclysmic changes next year," he states confidently. "Many, many people's lives will be taken, all in one go. Right across the world, in this country too."
So when should you flee to the high ground? "It will be between spring and summer and it will hit around Ireland, and then spread to Central America ? Chile and Peru will also be hurt. The weather will go haywire." Give us a for instance. "It will be like going back into the ice age. The south coast will be hit, but not as far as London."
Of course, Derek can't resist passing on feedback about the Sally Morgan affair, garnered on his touring show. "In Hull," confides Derek, "this lady shouted out: 'We were going to see Sally Morgan, but I'm not paying to see that charlatan now!'" I think we can live without projected moral outrage from a man once "possessed" on TV's Most Haunted by the spirit of a man called Kreed Kafer, only to discover afterwards that the words were an anagram of "Derek Faker", and had been fed to him by the suspicious show psychologist. Derek and Most Haunted parted company shortly thereafter.
But on he goes, and for those keen to know how maintains that complexion, the OK! Interview informs us that Derek demands peeled grapes as part of his dressing room rider. Very J-Lo. We also learn of dressing room meditations in which he communes with an entity described as "his African spirit guide, Sam". As Derek explains: "Sam is an oracle who I knew when I was growing up in Ethiopia in another lifetime. I love him," he goes on. "My wife, Gwen, says she lives with two men, me and Sam." Does she? On Twitter this week, she says: "Just had to remind Derek of my birth date. Why don't men remember these things?" Perhaps Sam could be charged with recalling such earthly trivialities ? a sort of ectoplasmic PA.
Anyway, there follows an account of Derek's Scunthorpe show. Arguably the most troubling vignette is the point in proceedings at which Derek is "contacted" by a racist "ghost". Forgive me, I'm running out of quote marks here. Anyway, the spirit's name is George. "He has changed," Derek informs the poor sap who imagines they're George's relative. "But he still doesn't like people from other countries. Especially the darker people. I heard him saying: 'Is there anyone from Africa in here?' That's not very nice, is it?"
Where do you start? Where. Do. You. Start?
The answer is you don't. Take a Silkwood shower and we'll reconvene for some chat about the X Factor.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2011/oct/27/lost-in-showbiz-derek-acorah
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