Careless whiskers: Derek Acorah's feline tales from the spirit world

Soul & Spirit magazine runs a column by Derek Acorah called “Pet Psychic” (Getty)

The internet is full of weird and wonderful things, but there are still times when a print magazine can teach new media a trick or two. Which is a long-winded way of drawing your attention to a publication called Soul & Spirit, which, for the past few years, has run a column by Derek Acorah called, I kid you not, “Pet Psychic”.

What happens, in the mag’s own words, is this: “Every issue we send psychic medium Derek Acorah photographs of two pets, sent in by real readers [fake readers, don’t even think about it]. Using his divine talent, Derek then tunes into their energies to provide us with the readings.” Genius.

And what does Acorah’s “divine talent” reveal about Ninja in the current issue? “My first impression of this cat is that he wants to be the boss. [He’s] very independent,” Acorah writes. And then comes the clincher, “If a mouse was around then he would be a typical cat, true to his instincts – initially wanting to play with it and then killing it.” Uncanny.

Acorah, whose show, it is worth remembering, was exposed in 2005 when the “sceptic” on Living TV’s Most Haunted planted notes leading Acorah to become “possessed” by a man called “Kreed Kafer”. The sceptic in question, Ciarán O’Keeffe, later revealed that the name was an anagram of Derek Faker. For his part, Acorah has promised to one day tell the “warts and all” story of what really occurred on the show.

In the meantime, you know what to do. Anyone got a photo of a long-dead pet or a much-hated stray called Efka?

Phantom menace

But before we get too sniffy about the spirit world, last week the Yorkshire Post posted a video online that was captured on the CCTV cameras of a Leeds bar and restaurant called Get Baked: The Joint. The footage, taken at about 3am, shows an eerie light and a spectral figure that walks across the closed space.

The film was spotted by one of the business’s co-owners, Marcus Levin, 26, who was randomly going through the CCTV footage when he saw something that he couldn’t explain. The Joint posted the film on its Facebook page and within a few days more than 100,000 had shared it.

Can Levin prove it is genuine? “I can’t, but it is,” he tells me. “The Joint is in an old church building and the Rev John Ely is buried here. Shortly before the film was taken, we put a lock on a door which used to lead down to the vicar’s house. I didn’t believe in ghosts before, but my feeling now is that we are having this activity because he couldn’t get into his house.”

Surely his ghost could walk through the walls? “Everyone keeps saying that,” Levin says. And before you go cynically accusing him of trying to drum up publicity, Levin says: “One of my partners knows of a place that had a ghost and it ruined the business because people were too scared to go there.” So, I put to Levin, making the video public could still come back to haunt him.

Hire education

He’s supremely adept at putting down other people’s dearth of imagination, but it seems that Lord Sugar is himself creatively constipated when it comes to the title of his latest magnus opus. “Do you want to see your title on the cover of Lord Sugar’s new book (out September 2015),” he tweeted last week. “The book covers Lord Sugar’s adventures in TV as the star of The Apprentice. Sorry, but You’re Fired or Hired or The Apprentice is off the table.”

Suggestions to #LordSugarBook include: “How to Get Something For Nothing: Like I Did With This Book Title”, “Why Do I Keep Firing People I Haven’t Employed?” and, my favourite, “I Hereby Offer My Humble Apologies to the British Public for Katie Hopkins”. You have until Tuesday to join the fun.

Gnome, sweet gnome

There is a rule in journalism: one is nothing, two is a coincidence, three is a trend. If that’s true, then garden gnomes – deemed tacky for decades – are definitely trending.

First, a signed gnome that appeared on the cover of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s album was expected to fetch about £17,000 at auction yesterday. Second, in protest at the fact that gnomes are banned from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the nearby Italian eatery, Daphne’s, has produced a range of “luxury garden gnomes” which will take up residence in the restaurant (and be available to purchase) from 19 May.

And, saving the best until last, sales of “Ghoulish Zombie Gnomes” have gone up by 400 per cent in the past year on the “unique gifts” website Firebox. The team behind said gnomes have a winning way with puns, too. The email telling me this exciting news was titled “Lawn of the Dead” while the gnomes are said to be made of “terror-cotta”.

No rhyme or reason

Another in a regular series of limericks based on recent events:

In Nigel Farage’s defence,

It wasn’t his crowd there, you sense,

So let’s do it in style,

On ‘Jeremy Kyle’

And let proper battle commence.

Twitter.com/@simmyrichman