Living TV’s haunting advice from beyond the grave

Living TV's prize show MOST HAUNTED - which for seven years has travelled the country investigating paranormal activity and thrilling millions - went on a spectacularly popular 'Search For Evil!' this week, broadcasting live from St George's Hall, Merseyside. 300 members of the public sat on folding chairs in a great atrium, as the show's presenter Yvette Fielding (ex-Blue Peter) and the medium Billy Roberts advanced down the aisle towards their seats at a round table for a seance. Yvette moved with great purpose, her black coat swishing, her skin as plump, moon-pale and credulous as an Edwardian schoolgirl's. The lights were green.
 
"I am speaking to any spirit people that might be amongst us in this ancient place," intoned Yvette. The no-nonsense, northern Fielding's accent had clambered up a few rungs in the presence of the dead. She was using her telephone voice: the one that sticks 'st' on the end of 'among.' "Come amongst us now. We thank you."

At the end of a very long pause, Yvette jerked forward quickly and whispered "What's that…! A low noise…! A rumbling…" The soundman put his head round his boom and reminded her, "We are very close to Lime Street…" but Yvette extended a traffic policewoman's, carmine-nailed hand. "Are you here?" she demanded. "Give a loud knock or a tap!" Yvette sets tremendous store by knocking and tapping. The dead are weak, incapable of doing much more than leaning over and grazing their knuckles across things.

She is like a supernatural supernanny. Pretty damned down on the deceased
 
There were claims made several years back in the Daily Mirror that the noises heard on MOST HAUNTED are not in fact the dead stirring but Yvette banging with her torch. I for one wouldn't blame her if she did. The public is tuned in and wants results. Now and again the camera turns to the studio audience, sitting in silence, huddling into their collars against a netherworld chill despite the temperate auditorium. They look strained and sceptical and convinced that given half a chance they'd get better results themselves. But oh, the dead are stubborn! They will not be bullied or persuaded.

Yvette was getting desperate. "Speak! Whistle! Throw something!" she pleaded, instinctively certain that death strips people of the ability to engage in complicated tasks. She's really quite bossy to those who have passed over. She's like a supernatural supernanny. Really pretty damned down on the deceased, Yvette actually makes you wonder whether the dead will be contacting Living TV to complain about her condescending portrayal of them. Frankly it's deadest, and deadism can have no place in today's non judgmental cosmogonies.

But suddenly Billy Roberts spoke. He was sensing children crying and a youngish man called Brian. "I am picturing manacles," he said. "Manacles and pain." "Could it have something to do with slavery?" asked Yvette, her eyes narrowed to Nancy Drew slits.  "Yes." "Was Brian black?"  "Yes." "Was Brian a slave?" Maybe he was just a perv and the manacles were from Agent Provocateur.  "Yes…" nodded Billy, very slowly, never terribly quick on the uptake. "I actually think he might have been." Someone leaned forward to say that the humidity register was off the scale. Of course, black people, Africa, the heat, the drums, Blood Diamond, Carry on Follow That Camel all that… Certainly Brian was a very popular name in 17th Century Liberia (it means He Who Has the Cunning of a Leopard.)  
 
If you ask me, Billy Roberts tends to clutch at straws. He's nowhere near as impressive as MOST HAUNTED's former resident medium, Derek Acorah, who claimed to have been guided by an Ethiopian called Sam. I always thought that the Ethopian thing was a nice touch. A Red Indian spirit guide would have been too corny. An Irishman, too flakey. Eskimo? Who listens to those fatties! And any mention of an Eastern European these days would just get the audience thinking about how cheaply they could get the loft converted (if only the buggers would stop spreading that syphilis around, like the Echo said!).

But the dignified Abyssinian Sam (short for Sambo one assumes. I mean: Sam !!??X!@£$. Doubtless it was the 111th Emperor in the Succession of King Soloman - Hailie Selassie's middle name. Hailie Sam Brian Sellasie) came good time and again, making Derek too famous for MOST HAUNTED. These days he and Sam conduct their own show, and give private readings for many thousands of pounds, some of which one hopes and trusts will find their way to NGOs relieving the suffering of the inhabitants of Darfur.

The spirits were calling for prudence, and more effectively than the PM

So it was Billy now sensing our entities for us. This one didn't mean any harm, he said, but was warning that they were in an evil place. This was a courthouse, where people were sent to their deaths! remembered Yvette, shifting in her chair. No, corrected a researcher, not to their deaths exactly, but many people had been sent to prison from here for being in debt. The audience turned to look at one another, certain that this information was meant specifically for them - that the spirits themselves were recommending prudence, and more effectively than the Prime Minister.

Why not? Aren't we all, in fact, already at the mercy of invisible forces we cannot fully comprehend or come into contact with, destroying our savings and magicking away our pensions? Why cock a snook at a friendly slave's budgetary tips? After all, whoever heard of a slave borrowing twenty grand for a fucking conservatory or a plasma screen? The avalanche has already fallen on our heads.
 
All over the country, things had started to happen. The many texts and emails being sent into the show by its thousands of fans were now being tickertaped, fast, across the bottom of the screen. ("A 70 year old mirror just fell off the wall. Strange. Laura in Huddersfield.") People claimed to be seeing all sorts of things: things in shrouds, lines of jurors in dark robes, women dancing. Death, death!

We got an impression of the dead tutting as if they were delayed at Terminal Five

Of course - where else would the dead strive towards but Living TV. We got an impression of an absolutely teeming afterlife, of multitudes of the dead crushed together, tutting as though in Terminal Five during a delay. And perhaps it really is like this on the other side: money worries, overpopulation, cancellations, waiting, satellite TV in the departure lounge. Didn't Madame Sosostris, the clairvoyante with the bad cold in Eliot's Wasteland, see nothing but crowds of people walking round in a ring?  
 
The great Derren Brown can, with tremendous skill and an admirable respect for reason, comprehensively debunk all this snake-oil until he's blue in the face (Derren Brown: Evening of Wonders, Tuesday 13th Jan, 10pm Channel 4 – brilliant.) But Derren doesn't get it. This episode of Most Haunted doubled Living's average viewing figures and was the most-watched non-terrestrial programme of the week. Times are hard. And that means the dead are enjoying a boom. ·