DEREK ACORAH - 2004  to 2006

"... or the leopard his spots?"   [Jeremiah 13:23]        

by Emma Gee  

November 2004

On 16th November, 2004, Kay Folwell purchased four front row tickets for Derek Acorah's show in Birmingham, six days later, from a seller on eBay, which cost £330.

Although known as Kay, her eBay and PayPal accounts are in her full name of Kathleen. When a problem arose with the PayPal payment, the seller gave Kay his business telephone number to ring for details of payment.

Kay says “I spoke with the guy and we had a lovely chat about me, my family and why I wished to see Derek live. I also told him that I had a disabled sister to look after and nights out were very rare.”

She also said that she would be taking her husband, sister and son to the show.
 

According to a forum post elsewhere, Gwen Johnson now claims "Mr. Nichols is unaware of this telephone conversation and states that it never took place. "

Of course such an apparently official denial does cause a problem for either Gwen Johnson or David Nicholls - or both -  as these two emails demonstrate.

Payment was made by banker’s draft, as a cheque would not have cleared in time. With the tickets, Kay received a copy of the recently-published ‘The Adventures of Derek Acorah’, inscribed “To Kay with love from Derek”.

As a Spiritualist herself, Kay had had readings through her Church, but had never seen a famous medium at work. To her delight, Kay was given a reading from Acorah that lasted a long time, and was, in her words, extremely accurate. He even asked who Kathleen was. She was both in awe of what she was told, and very impressed by his accuracy.

Kay then followed Acorah’s career with Most Haunted, as well as seeing more stage shows.

December 2005

When the then official Derek Acorah website and forum collapsed in December 2005, the Acorahs no longer had any point of contact with the fans as they did not hold the forum database.

In a conversation with Gwen Johnson, Kay agreed to help them out of an awkward situation with ‘The Unofficial Derek Acorah Forum’. As she told me

“All I ever wanted to do was to represent Derek on the net to thank him for the reading.”
 

 February 2006

In February 2006, an official Fan Club was set up, to handle the large amount of emails Acorah receives each day. It also provided information on Acorah’s television work and theatre shows.

At the same time, Kay’s forum became the Official Derek Acorah Forum, and she immediately made Gwen Johnson an Administrator, so that she would see that all dealings on the forum were completely above board, and the Administration team totally honest.
 

Kay was initially puzzled, then worried, when she realised that the person running the Fan Club, Linda Nicholls, was married to David Nicholls, the eBay seller from whom she had bought her tickets, and to whom she had revealed so many personal details prior to her reading from Acorah.

On investigating further, Kay discovered that Linda and Dave Nicholls sold an amazing number of front stalls tickets for Acorah’s shows all over the country on eBay. On one occasion a pair of their tickets sold for £800, but the Nicholls were not just selling a couple of tickets at one venue, and handful at another.

For the two Alexander Theatre shows, in November 2004, they held the whole of the two front rows for both nights. That’s ninety-six tickets, at £17.50 each - a total of £1,680.00.
 

Concerned that the Nicholls’ involvement in both the Fan Club and eBay ticket sales could be perceived as rather suspicious, Kay telephoned Gwen Johnson, to tell her what she had discovered.

Gwen initially suggested that Kay had got it all wrong and she must have misunderstood. However, Kay told her that she had kept all the documentation relating to her eBay purchase,.  She explained that the address on the back of the envelope containing her tickets and book was identical to that given for the Nicholls on the Fan Club website.

On hearing that, Gwen changed her story, and told Kay not to worry and to forget all about it. Gwen explained that she and Derek had been good friends for years with the couple, and knew them well.

Following Kay's telephone conversation about the Nicholls with Gwen Johnson, two things happened in quick succession.

Kay was banned from the Nicholls' Derek Acorah Experiences website, and the Nicholls’ eBay ticket sales ceased!

Linda Nicholls insists that everyone who joins the Fan Club must provide their full name and address.  This would, of course, place her in an ideal situation to gather information on members while selling Acorah’s merchandise to them, or organising the Spirit and the Sea ‘cruises’ (in reality an overnight crossing to Amsterdam on a roll-on-roll-off North Sea ferry!).

Linda Nicholls also sits on the front row, usually in seat 9, at nearly every one of Acorah’s shows, all over the country and abroad. She mingles with the audience in the bar before shows, chatting to people, and has reportedly been seen going backstage in the intervals.

Once again, she would be ideally placed to provide Acorah with information about the fans present.

So was Kay’s ‘reading’ a set-up by David Nicholls and Acorah, as she now suspects? Before brushing the suggestion aside as ridiculous, consider Acorah’s track record on this type of cheating over the last ten years.

Granada Breeze – Acorah used, on air, the contents of a letter written to him by a grieving parent, pretending it was a psychic contact.

Oxford – Acorah used information sent to him by John Towers when giving him a reading at a show in Oxford, pretending it was a message from the spirit of his mother-in-law.

Folkestone – Acorah used information sent to him by Rozze who had requesting healing, when giving her a reading at a Felixstowe show, pretending it was a message from the spirit of her nephew.

How many more grieving relatives have been duped in this way?  How many more will be in the future? Please don’t let it be you.
 

CLICK for part 1 - Can the Ethiopian change his skin... ? 

© Emma Gee 2007
www.doublexposure.co.uk

Updated 10 March 2007

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