It was my birthday on Sunday, and I got some brilliant gifts.

Billy bought me Spider-man 2 for the PS2. I think he had an ulterior motive on this one, but the game is fantastic fun none-the-less. As our friendly neighbourhood spider-man you get to swing and climb around the whole of NY, yes you really get the freedom of the City. One of Billy’s favourite things to do is to climb right to the top of the point of the Empire State Building then dive off into the air ensuring a webswing occurs before he becomes spidey-mush on the pavement.

I also got a brilliant book on Ray Harryhausen. If the name rings a bell, it could be because of the name of the sushi bar in Monsters Inc, or hopefully it’s because like me you loved the movies that this guy made. Ray is in my mind the master of stop animation, and was responsible for some of my favourite films when I was a kid. I have loved the movie Jason and the Argonauts for as long as I can remember, and the scene when the giant bronze statue Talos turns his rusty head around still sends shivers up my spine. Every Christmas and Bank Holiday I used to pray for a repeat of it. Seems weird now we all have videos and dvds, I guess my kids are spoilt. The book features stacks of images and sketches of all the creatures he has ever created on the small screen, and even some that never made it. It tells the story of Ray’s inspiration from the work of Willis O’Brian (who animated Kong) and how he set up his own studio at home to create some of his masterpieces.

I also finally got a copy of The War Magician to read, so I’ll post a review after I’ve read it, and Annie bought me a lovely hand-painted recorder from Peru. What she was doing there I’ll never know.

A week or so ago I was contacted by Emma who is one of the researchers of Bad Psychics. She explained she was setting up a new site “aimed at exposing Most Haunted, Most Haunted Live and Derek Acorah amongst others”. She was interested in publishing my account of an Evening with Derek Acorah and of course I agreed.

The site is still new and evolving, but it does have a few interesting articles about Mr Acorah.

My favourite is about the first episode of series 6 of Most Haunted. The episode aired on Living TV last week and was set in Bodmin Gaol. You can read the full transcript here, but in summary the article purports to have evidence that Derek was completely stitched up. In one section of the show, Derek is seen to be ‘possessed’ by a South African Jailor called Kreed Kafer. According to the article the name was made up by a couple of people on set, and talked about within earshot of Derek. The punchline is of course that Kreed Kafer is an anagram of Derek Faker. The author then sent an email to the head of Living TV quoting the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 proposing that Derek should be sacked.

Other articles of interest consider the origins of Derek’s name and why medium Thomas Alder believes Derek Acorah is faking it. Finally, here is the Daily Mirror article where Ciaran O’Keeffe finally reveals how he tricked Derek.

Last night I watched a taped copy of Sundays C4 episode of ‘Faking It’. It was brilliant. Nerdy Physicist Kevin McMahon transformed from geeky science student to table hopping magician. Highlights included him being thrown in at the deep-end and having to perform some tricks in front of Penn and Teller (he completely cocked it up, leaving Penn looking somewhat bored and unimpressed), doing a 5 minute standup slot at a gay comedy club and the realisation on his face that saying he was a magician was a real girl-puller. This meant he no longer had to resort to using his ‘lucky’ jumper that from what we gathered gave him a little success with a girl, sort of, once. In the end he completely fooled the expert panel (including Paul Daniels no less), and he loved it so much that he immediately quit his physics phd to become a full time magician. Afterwards I was all ready to give up being a geeky IT consultant and becoming a full time table-hopping magician too until Paula pointed out how many tables I would have to ‘hop’ to pay the mortgage. Maybe I should practice more.

Is Derren trying to crack the USA?
In this mornings New York Times, Sarah Lyall introduces America to Derren under the title “Mind-Reading? No, Just Head Games”. He does, of course, completely bamboozle her with a Derren Brown classic illusion. I’m sure they’ll love him.

Derren Brown’s Seance has been voted 4th most frightening moment on TV.

The top 5 are:

1. Killer Corrie (2003) - Over 19 million viewers tuned in when conman Richard Hillman (Brian Capron) killed Maxine Peacock in her home before kidnapping the whole family and driving them into the canal.

2. Dr Who - The Daleks
The ruthless race of fighting machines have been tormenting Dr Who since the Sixties and are set to return in the new series.

3. Cracker - To Be A Somebody - Robert Carlyle plays a terrifying psychopath who exacts revenge for the Hillsborough disaster.

4. Derren Brown - Illusionist Derren Brown manipulates 12 people into believing that they were communicating with the dead.

5. Dr Who - The Cybermen one of the show`s most popular monsters.

Last weekend we took the kids to see the Chuckle Brothers in their current production of “Pirates of the River Rother”. It was absolutely brilliant. The show was typical panto stuff with Paul and Barry getting into scrapes with evil captains, and was loosely (and I mean loosely!) based upon Pirates of the Carribean”. We all had a fab time, and we’ll definitely be going to next years tour. Interestingly the bad guys in the show were played by the “Patton Brothers” who are Paul and Barry’s older brothers. Also on the show were Safire a boy-girl illusion act that we all enjoyed too. After the show we all got to meet the Chuckle Brothers who were signing stuff in the theatre lobby. Billy got into a bit of “to me, to you” banter with Barry and it made the whole day really special. Highly recommended.

A new comedy starts tonight on BBC3 called High Spirits With Shirley Ghostman. It’s nicely timed to hook in with increased interest in ‘real’ psychic mediums such as Derek Acorah. It looks quite funny, she claims she is “one of Britain’s leading psychics” and that here “friends are dead famous. Like Lady Diana. And Roy Orbison.”. One to watch I think.AD17