This isn't a ghost, it is Evette Fielding

After almost a decade of singularly failing to find any evidence of paranormal activity, UK Living has finally called time on the show Most Haunted. Why am I writing about this? Well it is because the show, for whatever reason, holds a very special place in my telly watching heart. I know it was utter tripe, one of the worst things on telly, but on a regular basis, Alex and Kyri and I would get together to watch it. Invariably we watched it just so we could exclaim, ‘What a load of bollocks!’ but that was still fun. In fact, we have a catch phrase that we distilled from it. When ever someone talks about something mystical, we recall a Leeds lass who was on the show, who having been scared proclaimed…’I thaw (saw) it!’ As her justification. And when pushed on what she saw, she couldn’t say….only that she thaw it!

Let me get the disclaimers out of the way,  I don’t believe in the paranormal. I think anything like that, ghosts, lights, visions and all that kind of stuff can be put down to the brain and the stimuli it is receiving. I believe when you die, that is it. I don’t think that is sad, I think it is a reason to appreciate every moment you have. Also, another reason I don’t believe in things like ghosts is because look at the people they choose to speak through. Not someone with the gravitas of Obama. No, they go for mildly camp Scousers in the shape of Derek Acorah.

Ah, Derek Acorah, a man proven to be a fraud on the show, and who left after being found out through several traps.  A man whose spirit guide was a naked Ethiopian man called Sam. And at this point no one’s alarm bells were ringing? A man who thought the way to convince people you were from ye olden times is to call every woman a wench and every man sirrah. He was once pretending to be possessed by RAF pilot who crashed in the Channel. The researcher asked the spirit how much fuel was needed to cross the Channel. Derek, as his pilot alter-ego, was outraged. How dare you ask me that, I am a RAF pilot. Only you’re not Derek! You are a con man, who when he is not making up historical lies through stuff you have found out on Google, you are abusing hurt and vulnerable people with your live act!

Derek left in a hail of controversy after he was possessed by the spirit of a man called Kreed Kafer. In a later interview the programme's parapsychologist, Ciaran O'Keeffe, said that the character was a fabrication he invented, and an anagram of "Derek faker". O'Keeffe had fed this name to Acorah prior to the programme, and he had subsequently repeated it during filming. To be fair to him, calling Derek Acorah a fake, is like calling a nun religious, it is stating the bleeding obvious.

It was this point when I started to worry. I knew the whole thing was camp entertainment, but they were really looking for ghosts. As if the best way to contact the spirit world was to have a camera crew, filming in night vision, whilst a lying Liverpudlian marauded around, apparently becoming possessed by the spirit of Henry VIII in front of Terry Nutkin!

Strangely, through the show I was able to ascertain that there never seemed to be any ghosts after 1900. Tupac never came to them and told them who shot him?  They were all older than that, like the spirit world decided that at the turn of the century, rather than become ghosts, they would just…well you know…die.

Which seems to be what the commissioners have decided to do with the show.

The reason it holds a special place I think is because it was a ritual we (Alex, Kyri and I ) watched when we came back from Uni. It was a break from recording Future Farmer stuff, and deep down, I think all three of us would have liked to be proved wrong, and that there were ghosts. But if anything, it did the exact opposite and proved that there is nothing! Spirit orbs were blatantly bits of dust. Bangs and scrapes were just that. Low hisses were always wind and there were never, ever, and full body apparitions.

So RIP Most Haunted, you may be sued under the trade descriptions act after 10 years of proving not a single haunting, but you were fun to watch, for a while. Then it was massively boring.

- Anand