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04/16/2006: "Living TV's psychics"

In spite of myself, I can't help liking the clairvoyants on Living TV.

Colin Fry - presenter of The 6ixth Sense is a funny but rather likeable little bloke, who calls people "my love" and does a sort of FAQ session at the end of his show, where members of the audience ask general questions on psychic matters. I'm not going to get into the business of whether any of this stuff is real or not. Let's just say Colin chips away for 80% of the time with nothing very remarkable happening and then suddenly makes you sit bolt upright by pulling an amazing rabbit out of that big hat in the sky. (Gullible? Moi? I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation for how he knows the dog was called Snowy and was knocked over by an L-reg Vauxhall on December 4th.)

Tony Stockwell is a bit more of a geezer. He previously presented a show called Street Psychic, where he'd stop women shoppers at Bluewater or somewhere and tell them they were having problems with men. They'd nod in agreement and ask him whether he knew anywhere they could buy a fake Moschino belt. Tone is the kind of bloke you'd expect to be acting as compere in an Essex bingo hall, except that he'd probably be calling out the ball that was about to be drawn. He has a natural charm and rather nifty line in flash clothes that I reckon would be a hit with ladies 25 years older than him. What a nice young man.

My favourite, however, has to be happy medium John Edward, who is competing for the world record in the number of uses of the word "validate" in a single TV broadcast. Edward presents an American show called Crossing Over in an excitable New Joisey kind of accent. Sometimes he's speaking so fast that you worry he's going to explode and cross over himself.

You can watch this stuff at 9 o'clock in the morning if you want. But it almost certainly clashes with reruns of Quincy on ITV3. Something that these presenters really ought to have foreseen.