An Evening at the Psychic Bus-Station with Tony Stockwell by Squirrel

Some people would say that Tony Stockwell is a cold reader. I would have to disagree.

 

He is a master of the art of cold reading. If I wore a hat, I would doff it to him.

 

This man has the ‘spirit world’ queuing up at his shoulder.

 

Tony Stockwell gives value for money. He gives his audience double the spirit visitors that Derek Acorah and Colin Fry produce. His accuracy is on a par with the other two as well; so if you were looking for value for money (or spirits per pound) then I would have to recommend Mr Stockwell
 

When I say accuracy, I might actually mean inaccuracy because, in my opinion, he only came out with one thing that was noteworthy. He suggested to a woman from East London that her father worked with dray horses. That was correct but he probably recognised the accent and took a guess. There are a lot of breweries on that side of London. (He is also from that side of the city)

 

He generally keeps with vague pronouncements so that if a point isn’t taken up, he can ignore it and trundle on…Where Acorah and Fry got aggressive; Stockwell ploughs on like a driverless train.

 

His introduction to himself and the world of spirit was done in an ‘I’m just a cheeky, cheery, cockney chappie way. I must admit I did smile a couple of times.
 

Although the theatre was less than three-quarters full, the faithful outnumbered the virgins.

 

Would I have joined the Tony Stockwell fan club by the end of the evening? – I didn’t have to wait long to find out…

 

Oh boy.  I must admit that I was expecting his opening message to have been a little more specific. A woman in the audience claimed a man who had died of a heart attack in his mid fifties. I was mildly taken aback (I couldn’t quite work myself up to being astounded) when instead of putting on a ‘good reading’ he came out with such inanities as ‘misgivings’ ‘put things right’ ‘big kiss’ ‘new direction, new purpose – new way forward’.

Stockwell then claimed that the woman’s father was with him and wanted the message passed on that she was a ‘good girl, went out of her way to help others’ How many women would that apply to, I wonder?

 

His only hit was that the woman and her husband had no children. I suppose that if she’d said they had, he would have said that there was none in spirit!

 

Could it get any worse than this? Could I sit through the next two or three hours? I’m not a very patient person. It had to get better!

 

Well, I’m pleased to report that he did start coming up with names, dates and circumstances. Unfortunately, the more precise he was, the poorer was his accuracy. He was on much firmer ground when he was generalising. It’s reasonable to guess that a woman in her late sixties would have at least one parent dead. It’s also not unusual that if your child has died young, then they might have been chronically ill, as more children die of illness than in accidents or murder.

 

I won’t subject any reader to a transcript of the show, but I will use quotes.

 

Out of the twelve, yes, TWELVE, readings, one woman claimed three. Very strange, as she was unable to clarify most of what he said.

 

After he had given a detailed description of a man who had died at the wheel of a car; taller than 5’10”; big arms; big chest; blue-grey eyes; short hair; wife, Anne, Annie, Angie; two or three children, D sound, David, Dee?  She decided he was her ex-husband who had remarried and had three children.

She then came unstuck with Stockwell saying he had done a moonlight flit – No.

Did he have sandy chest hair? – No.

Getting tricky, so he produces Irene/Rene. Irene liked to dance and lift her skirts in the air. No, the woman wouldn’t claim her ( though, honestly, who would?)

 

Jonathon, John, Jamie – uncle figure – John. Oh, yes, Uncle Jack. Uncle Jack brings her father on.

Father liked to paint by numbers – er No. There’s one here of a horse’s head. Again No.
 

Father is happy; he wishes he were more chilled in life. (Is that the idiom of an elderly man?) He says that the woman is the image of him. Stockwell sees him with a walking stick- Yes (how unusual is that?)

Was he 84? No

Would he have been 84? No

He did die in 1984, she thought...

 

By the time the woman had stood up for the third time to claim a spirit, there was a look of panic in his eyes. He had described an old lady in a nursing home who had died in a chair, quickly and peacefully. Amazingly, he was able to describe her as being in her late eighties or nineties, with grey curly hair and a cardigan. She went by the name of Emma/ Emily. (People were gasping with amazement! I mean, does that remind you of any little old ladies that you know?)

 

At this spookily accurate description, Desperate Woman leapt up and all Stockwell could do was weakly say ‘She wants to thank you’.  For what, we never found out.

 

The evening was a dreadful mish-mash of rubbish, delivered at breakneck speed. I couldn’t believe he was such a conduit for the spirit word.

 

It was like a psychic bus-station.

 

Now, after the interval, he held a question and answer session.  There were only three questions.  The first was from one of his acolytes on the front row who attends a lot of his workshops (hum) The next was about reincarnation. At this point I was sitting idly doodling about what I’d like to ask him.

Oh, I wish I’d been prepared. Because his cronies (Acorah and Fry) had dispensed with their sessions, I hadn’t given this part of the show a second thought.

Well, Dear Reader, the strangest thing happened – my hand shot up and the next thing I knew, I had a mic shoved in my hand and I was about to chat with the Great Channeller in front of about seven hundred people.

 

I took a deep breath, opened my mouth and
 

“Why do spirits not give you their full name and who exactly they want to talk to? Why are they so vague? And why do they have nothing of importance to say?”

 

As a heckle, I admit it was on the tame side, but hey, I was thinking on my feet. (Not easy in my case!)

 

While Stockwell was answering, valid point, blah, blah, fault of medium not spirit, blah, blah, I was astonished (not really) at the mutterings and dirty looks I was getting.

I’m afraid I bottled out of my supplementary question which was going to be  along the lines of ‘How can you sleep at night?’ I had to content myself with a ‘Hmm, yeah right!’

 

Honestly I haven’t had such a boring night out at the theatre since I went to see Ken Dodd and managed to escape (literally) at the interval. All through the second half of the Stockwell extravaganza I kept asking my husband if we could leave.

 

Although Tony Stockwell is a very personable young man, he is incredibly dull. He tries to inject his spiel with little phrases designed to amuse, such as when he was telling a woman about her mother in a wheelchair- ‘She seemed to be vacant, well, she wasn’t, she just couldn’t be arsed to talk’

Exactly the thing a grieving daughter would want to hear from her mother, especially after paying £18.00 for the privilege.

 

Before I went to see this man, I tried to research his technique and looked for critiques of his shows. Strangely, I only found one brief reference. I was puzzled, as he seems to have a full diary of shows. After having seen him in all his glory, I now understand.

 

All the other reviewers either expired from boredom or drowned in frothy platitudes.