“GIVING that healing comfort and sometimes closure to people is what is most important to me,”

Derek Acorah said ahead of his show in Hereford next week.

Derek, one of the UK’s best known psychic mediums, has spent years touring the world delivering messages from the “other side”, but being psychic hasn’t always been the gift he sees it as now.

The 63-year-old, who was born in Merseyside, said: “I first realised I was psychic at the age of six.

“I was at my grandmother’s house where I saw a man I didn’t recognise wearing a three-piece suit. I told my family about it as I wanted to know what this strange man was doing in my grandmother’s house, and they showed me an old photograph. The man was in the picture, and it turned out to be my grandfather, who died before I was born.

“Of course it was scary at first as the spirits would often show themselves to me and tell me who they were and how they died. Thankfully my grandmother was also psychic and guided me through it. I don’t know what I would have done without her.”

Even with his grandmother’s help it wasn’t always easy. He said that as a young boy his friends’ parents would keep them away from him in case he passed on a message he wasn’t supposed to.

“As I grew up I learned to control the communication, but I could never have imagined I would be doing what I am now.

“I used to play football with Liverpool Football Club, but a knee injury put a stop to that, but I see what I do now as a vocation, not a job.”

And it certainly has given Derek some stories to tell.

“"Probably one of the nicest things to have happened at a show is when a woman called Myra came through to me and wanted to talk to her granddaughter, Sophie.

She wanted to me to pass on her congratulations on Sophie’s pregnancy with twins.

“It turned out that Sophie and her husband had been trying for years to get pregnant, so Sophie’s husband got angry, saying that I shouldn’t be telling people things like that.

“A few nights later I got a letter from Sophie, telling me she was indeed pregnant. And almost a year later the couple came to see me at another show – and they brought the twin girls along with them.”

Although it’s always nice to give good news, Derek says he uses his personal discretion to hold back things that might be harmful to the receiver of the message.

“You always want to help and never hinder,” he says.

While many believe in psychics, there are those who don’t, but he encourages people not to judge until they have met him in person.

“Just try the show,” he says.

“Some people come as a sceptic but leave saying I have changed how they think.

“Some just don’t believe and others won’t believe, but my family help me through it all. I’m a very lucky man.”

Derek Acorah’s The Eternal Spirits tour is at The Courtyard next Thursday, September 19.

To book, call the box office on 01432 340555

Click to go to The Courtyard
Hereford Times: The Courtyard - Herefordshire's Centre for the Arts