the team about it. We all agreed that though Belgrave Hall has many ghostly visitations and an enormous amount of residual energy, what had been caught on tape was nothing more than a combination of bad weather and a camera fault which had given the impression that a ghostly apparition had been photographed when in fact it had not.
And so the ISPR team’s visit to the UK came to an end. The following day I waved them off from Heathrow airport and wondered when we would meet again.
In fact it was the following July, when I flew across the Atlantic to meet the team for the premier showing of Ghosts of England and Ghosts of Belgrave Hall at the Vogue Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. And I hope I will have the pleasure of seeing them again in the autumn of 2004 when a huge paranormal convention is scheduled to take place in Los Angeles.
By now I was well used to working on radio and had been a regular guest on Radio City’s Billy and Wally Show each Friday for over a year. I had also had a regular Sunday-evening guest spot on Red Rose Radio when I took telephone calls and gave live readings on air.
But in September 1999, just as my first book, The Psychic World of Derek Acorah, was due to go into the shops, I received a telephone call asking me to go to London to guest on the Talk Radio James Whale Show and my heart plummeted! James Whale! James has a reputation of not suffering fools gladly and I had the distinct impression that he would definitely consider me to be a fool.
On the appointed Sunday Gwen and I drove down to London. To say that I was nervous would be an understatement. We arrived at the studio and as I took the lift up to the reception desk I could hear James’s voice being piped through the corridors. ‘And my guest this evening is Derek Acorah. He says he can talk to dead people!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Gwen told me. ‘Just promote your book and we’ll be out of here in half an hour. It’s not as though he’s going to eat you!’ I hoped she was right.
Before I knew it I was sitting in the studio with James. ‘Welcome, Derek,’ he said. ‘Now tell me—just what exactly is it that you do?’
I proceeded to explain my work as a medium. ‘Right!’ said James. ‘Then perhaps you wouldn’t mind doing a reading for me?’
‘Oh dear!’ I thought. This was the last thing that I had expected to do. ‘Don’t worry, Derek,’ I heard Sam whisper.
I opened myself up to James’s vibrations and saw a lady in spirit who came up behind him and stood there smiling. She was quite plump but gave me the impression that she had not always been so, that once she had been lithe and slim. She impressed upon me that she had had lots of problems with her hips but that she had passed to spirit as a result of cancer. She mentioned the name ‘Michael’. Then she was joined by a gentleman who also stood behind James and placed a hand on his shoulder. I got the distinct impression that this man loved the open air and had some links with farming. Oddly enough, though, I also saw him standing behind a bar in the role of landlord.
All the time that I had been passing this information over to James he had said nothing, only uttering the odd grunt now and again. When I finished speaking he was gracious enough to confirm that his mother had once been a ballet dancer but had ended up with hip problems because of her dancing and consequently had put on weight. She had passed to the world of spirit as a result of cancer. The name ‘Michael’ was certainly relevant. He was James’s father who had been the landlord of a public house for many years but whose desire had always been to buy a farm and live off the land. I breathed a sigh of relief. Sam had not let me down.
‘Would you like to stay on after the midnight news and take some telephone calls?’ James asked. Of course I would!
Before I knew it, it was 2 o’clock in the morning and James was bringing his show to a conclusion. I had been on air for three hours, including two hours of telephone calls. James was jubilant. ‘Well done, Derek!’ he said. ‘We’ll have to have you back!’
And so after that every Sunday evening would see me travelling to Stockport for a live link-up with James in his London studio. For three hours I would conduct telephone sittings live on air.
At this time I was continuing to conduct my personal readings as well as joining Billy and Wally on a Friday morning on their Radio City show. I was also appearing every week on Granada Breeze television in Manchester. The demands on my time were so great, I didn’t even have time to arrange theatre appearances. ‘You need an agent,’ James said to me one day. ‘I know a great one. He’s my own agent. I’ll give you his number.’
A few days later I contacted Stuart Hobday. What Stuart thought on that day I really do not know. His background lay in music and theatre. To be contacted by a clairvoyant must have seemed a little strange to him, but thank goodness that he agreed to meet me. We have worked together successfully ever since and I would like to think that this situation will continue for a very long time to come.
My weekly spot on The James Whale Show unfortunately came to an end in the April of the following year when James had to undergo serious surgery. Since then I have been a guest on his show whenever my schedule has allowed, but I often look back fondly to that day when two panic-stricken people drove to London to meet the great James Whale.
All things psychic were now proving to be hugely popular with television audiences and Livetime had changed its name to Psychic Livetime and was now solely involved in airing mind, body and spirit subjects. The producers decided that another programme should be created, called Predictions. Guests would be invited to the studio to demonstrate their expertise in the various aspects of mediumship, astrology, dream analysis and so on. My contribution would be to demonstrate mediumship to a small studio audience and to conduct one-to-one sittings live on air.
The show was pre-recorded, but what was filmed went out on air—what the television audience saw was what had really taken place. I was elated when I was told that the viewing figures for Predictions were as great, if not greater, then the figures for Psychic Livetime.
Predictions continued for approximately 12 months and at the end of that time I was called in to see the editor once more and was informed that the format of the programme was to be changed and it was now to be called Predictions with Derek Acorah. The response to my contribution had been such that the producers had decided to dedicate the programme to me alone. I was surprised but elated, because I now knew that I was indeed fulfilling my destiny, just as Gran had predicted all those many years ago.
In the new programme I would continue to demonstrate mediumship to a studio audience, but there would be a new feature which would involve me going out to meet people and conducting sittings for them in their own homes. A further section of the programme would see me being taken to alleged haunted locations to conduct investigations there. I would not be told where I was going or the name of the location I was to investigate.
I had mixed feelings about this. Although visiting people to conduct sittings for them held no fear for me—it was what I was used to and I loved my work—the idea of wandering around old buildings talking about days gone by held no appeal
