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be up on this platform conducting the service. He tells me that I’m good but that you will be better. He’s laughing and saying, “Just tell him it’s Shanks!”’

      Gloria continued with messages from my grandmother Helen, my Uncle George and a family friend called Micky. She told me that one day my name would be in lights and that I would work for spirit in all parts of the world, and finished by asking me if she could talk to me after the service.

      When the final prayers and hymns had been completed and the absent healing requests read out, I waited at the back of the hall to speak to Gloria. She was a lovely lady and congratulated me on the work that I was to do for spirit.

      After a few minutes the booking secretary for the church approached us. ‘I’d like to book you to conduct next week’s service here,’ she said.

      ‘Me?’

      I was overwhelmed. Although I had spent many years as a member of a Spiritualist congregation, I had never taken the platform before. Gwen was busily digging me in the ribs, urging me to agree. She had always said that I should have more confidence in myself. I reluctantly agreed that I would travel to Lancaster the following Sunday to take the role of presiding medium for their evening service.

      For the whole of the following week I was extremely nervous and wasn’t looking forward to our trip to Lancaster at all. Finally the day arrived. We set out to travel along the M6 but as we were nearing the service station at Charnock Richard, the car began to overheat. We pulled onto the forecourt and checked the radiator. Although there was no sign of a leak, there was very little water in it.

      ‘I think we’d better telephone the church and tell them that I won’t be able to make it,’ I said to Gwen.

      ‘No way,’ she replied. ‘You’ve said that you’ll take the service and you’ll do just that, even if I have to push you there in the car!’

      We filled a couple of bottles with water and set off once more. We had to stop twice to let the engine cool and to top up the radiator, but eventually we arrived in Lancaster and parked up in front of the church.

      As I walked in through the door my stomach was rolling and I was feeling terribly nervous. The walk to the podium seemed endless as I tottered along on quaking legs. Then the prayers were said and the hymns were sung and before I knew it, it was time for my demonstration of mediumship.

      ‘Please don’t let me down,’ I begged Sam.

      ‘Don’t worry, Derek, this is your destiny,’ Sam replied.

      And I need not have worried. After a faltering start, the messages began to flow. I saw spirit people and I heard spirit people, and they all passed on messages of love to their family members sitting in the congregation. I found I was really enjoying myself.

      Before I knew it I was being called to time by the president of the church. I received a round of applause and my heart swelled with gratitude. As I stood there on that tiny platform in one of the smallest churches I have ever been in, I knew that I had been foolish to question spirit. Those on the other side knew that I was ready to undertake platform work—they had told me so through Gloria—but I, through human frailty, had doubted it. Thank goodness that Gwen had an unswerving faith in my mediumistic abilities and had urged me to do just what Shanks had told me—to carry on no matter what obstacles were put in my way!

      ‘People Friendly’ Spiritualism

      Over the following years I travelled the country appearing in Spiritualist churches in different towns. Although I very much enjoyed this aspect of my work for spirit, it frustrated me that so few people were attending the churches. At the very best, we could only expect an audience of 50 or 60 people. In those days people had some very strange conceptions regarding Spiritualism. They imagined the churches to be places where only a few rather strange people gathered to hold séances in a darkened room with a red light glowing. The hard and fast belief was that ‘normal’ people just did not go there, only people who wanted to ‘talk to the dead’. I realized that it was time that Spiritualism took a step forward into the present day and become more ‘people friendly’.

      I knew that the great Doris Stokes and one or two of the better-known mediums in the UK had appeared in theatres. ‘What would happen,’ I thought, ‘if I did something similar, though obviously not on such a grand scale?’

      With this idea in mind I contacted one or two cabaret clubs in the Liverpool area to see whether they would be interested in hiring out their premises to me for an evening of clairvoyance. Unsurprisingly, I received a number of point-blank refusals, but eventually I received a positive response from the manager of the Orrell Park Ballroom. A date was arranged and a month or so later I was waiting backstage to be announced to an audience of 250 or more people.

      ‘This is the way it’s meant to be,’ I thought to myself. ‘If I’m to be working for spirit, surely it’s part of my job to ensure that I spread that knowledge to as many people as possible.’ I knew that I had been inspired to make the correct decision.

      It was the first time that I had demonstrated to an audience of more than 40 or 50 people. Word had got around from people who had been for private sittings with me and Gwen had kindly offered to print off some leaflets advertising the event and had trudged around the streets of the local area putting them through the letterboxes. This was a task she undertook on a regular basis for subsequent evenings of clairvoyance at venues throughout Liverpool, though her endeavours came to an abrupt end one day when a rather sneaky dog failed to announce his presence by barking, but silently waited under the letterbox and bit the ends of her fingers as she pushed the leaflet through!

      That first evening at the Orrell Park Ballrom I began my demonstration with a short talk and then proceeded to approach people in the audience and give them messages from their loved ones in the world of spirit. Time after time I was met with tears of joy and gratitude from the people to whom I spoke. It was a wonderful feeling. At the end I received thunderous applause and I knew that the evening had been a great success. ‘This is the way it’s meant to be,’ I thought to myself…

      Following the success at the Orrell Park Ballroom I decided to move further afield. Over the next year or two I appeared at civic halls and small theatres. Audiences were growing and interestingly I noticed that they were no longer comprised exclusively of women. I also began to notice that other mediums were following in my footsteps. The word of spirit was definitely being spoken to a wider audience now!

       A Breeze

      Time moved on and eventually I was spreading the word not just in theatres but also on television. One day early in 1999 I was arriving at the Psychic Livetime studios when I was stopped by Rachel, one of the assistant producers. ‘Derek, can you please help me? I’ve lost my engagement ring. I don’t know how or where and I’m so upset. Not only is it my engagement ring, but it’s irreplaceable because it’s an antique.’

      Rachel was dreading having to tell her fiancé about the loss. She had spent hours searching all the rooms she had been into since arriving at the studios, but to no avail. The ring was nowhere to be found.

      I closed my eyes and asked Sam to help. I was shown a room full of clothes with dummies dressed in different costumes. This was all rather strange because I knew that Rachel was an assistant producer and would spend her days in the gallery or on the studio floor and not in the wardrobe department. Nevertheless, I decided to ask her whether what I had been shown was correct. She stood and thought for a moment and then remembered that when she had arrived for work that morning she had taken a telephone call from the wardrobe department asking her to send a runner up to collect an outfit for the presenter Becky Want. She realized that as it was still very early, none of the runners would have arrived at work, so she decided that she would go and collect the items herself. When she arrived at Wardrobe, she was directed to an outfit hanging on a rail in the corner of the room.

      ‘Whilst

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