Something that makes me really quite angry...

So earlier this week I went out with Emma and Julie from work to see a show at the Capitol. When we signed up for this we all knew it was going to be...um...interesting. I went a) out of pure curiosity and b) to support Em for reasons that aren't relevant to this blog. And what did we go to see? Wasn't so much a what as a who...

For those of you who don't know that's Derek Acorah. He does those ridiculous shows like Most Haunted (which, I would like to hastily point out, I have never wasted my life watching) and makes his living as a medium. Now I have always been...how shall I put it politely...extremely skeptical (to the point of being rude) about people such as him. I mean folk who say they hear voices (alive or dead) are probably not all there. And there's something fishy about someone who parades this "gift" on stage and national television (I believe he even had a five second appearance on Doctor Who), charging goodness knows what for the privelige, whilst claiming to want to help people. Surely you can do that without the daylight robbery. (Or perhaps I'm just being niave...I'll never make a convincing capitalist, will I?)

Nevertheless I decided to go, paid for my ticket and, by Wednesday afternoon was getting curious as to what the show would entail (having never seen any form of medium do anything I couldn't help but wonder.) So, after a drink or two and some pizza (mmm...pizza...) we toddled off to the Capitol. Over dinner we'd been talking about how we reckoned it was a con (apparently Acorah once got a "message" from "the other side" from someone's cat..................there are no words for that...) and agreed not to divulge any personal history once in the foyer or theatre as he would have people listening to the chit-chat of the crowd. A very wise decision indeed based on what happened.

I'll point out we were a little bit on the tipsy side going in and boy, oh boy did we need it! The music as we sat waiting was your usual mysterious-ghostly-new-agey rubbish (no surprises there) but when he was about to make his entrance it suddenly changed to the absolute cheesiest 80's-esque pop music you've ever heard. We all (rather loudly) pissed ourselves laughing. No one else seemed to. But the music was flipping loud too so maybe it's just that we couldn't hear them. Or they were taking it seriously and really didn't like us...that's probably more likely...

So anywho he comes out and does his little intro. Talks about his "gift" and his friend Sam (a spirit that helps him interpret what the other ghostly folk are saying...yeah, I know...) and how he wants the audience to relax and not be afraid to call out if you think the message or whatever is for you blah, blah, blah. One thing that annoyed me a bit at this stage was the way he seemed to merge different belief systems into his own. Like he was cherry-picking the bits he wanted from different religions to appease everyone. Actually, it more than annoyed me.

So the show goes on and he starts talking to thin air and people start calling out from the audience and, well, I'm sure you get the general gist. Most of it was unbearably corny but after a short while I began to get quite angry about the whole thing. What made me (and the others I'd like to say) so cross was that most of these people were so obviously vulnerable and grieving for loved ones and that Acorah was playing on that. In a really blatant way. And why was he using them in this way? £££££££ It's making mad just thinking about it! It's just not fair how one man can manipulate so many people, raise their hopes so high just to make money. And if you criticise the whole thing (as Julie did after the show) you're just dismissed as a narrow-minded skeptic. I really do feel sorry for those who believe the rubbish he spouts, they're in genuine pain and they trust someone who obviously doesn't really care for them.

Don't people like that just give you the greatest faith in the human race?