Tony Stockwell is one of the UKs better-known touring psychics, having performed previously as one of The Three Mediums alongside Derek Acorah and Colin Fry. In 2009 he toured with the controversial American psychic James Van Praagh, and has countless television and book credits to his name. Last month, I attended one of Stockwell’s demonstrations of mediumship, in the same venue that previously hosted Derek Acorah (whom I once got to witness incorrectly guess the gender of a dead baby to the mother’s face).
For me, the first red flag was the wordy disclaimer on the venue website. It claimed that “recent legislative guidelines insist that any Evening of Mediumship should be billed ‘for entertainment purposes.’’
This is likely referencing the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951 which prohibited people from obtaining payment from people by pretending to have psychic abilities when they don’t, unless making it clear it’s just for entertainment purposes. The 1951 act was replaced with the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 which protects consumers from unfair sales and marketing practices. A lot of psychics still use the “entertainment only” disclaimer, even though they don’t need to by law.
I didn’t realise until I arrived at the venue that I’d booked a seat in the VIP section, which was the front six or so rows. It became clear that these rows were filled with devotees, or at least, people who were associated with local spiritualist churches, and who had attended a lot of Tony Stockwell’s performances and psychic workshops. There were moments when Stockwell seemed to share in-jokes with lots of people in the audience. When prompted to reveal who had been to a demonstration before, the majority of the 300+ members of the audience raised a hand. Stockwell delivered some very precise information to some audience members and some very imprecise information to others. It was difficult to know who in the audience he knew or, at least, was familiar with.
He also delivered some troubling messages that had the potential to be damaging to the person they were intended for. One woman was told somebody had stolen her mother’s ring, for example. It seemed, to me, irresponsible to deliver such a message without knowing the circumstances of that person, and the impact that message could have on their life and the lives of those also involved in such an allegation. During the evening, Stockwell used some vague descriptions of people that nobody recognised or claimed, and some of the spirits he claimed to communicate with were almost caricature in nature – an Irish man who liked to drink, large in stature, called Mick. Anyone want to claim him? No, onto the next one…
During the interval, I remained seated and the woman sitting next to me started up a conversation. She did her absolute best to convince me to attend my local Spiritualist church, and was able to list off all the local churches, what days and times they met, and at which ones you were guaranteed to receive a message. “The one in Westbury” she warned “is just a collection of everyone in the audience trying to claim messages that aren’t for them, so best avoid that one”. I found it interesting that she hadn’t spotted the same thing happening in that very room. She told me she just wanted evidence that her family were still with her, and she explained how she’d had many psychic messages coming through for her at different shows and at church meetings. She radiated genuine hope.
The marketing copy for the Stockwell tour claims that “Tony certainly uses his natural wit, showmanship and Cockney charisma to entertain but more importantly, Mediumship has the potential to change someone’s life and instil in them a sense of peace, comfort and purpose. We hope that nobody can fail to come away untouched by the experience.”
During the second half of the show it became really clear that what Stockwell was doing did have the potential to be life-changing, but not necessarily in a good way. For example, a lot of the people in the VIP section would claim Stockwell’s psychic messages as intended for them when the information didn’t really seem to fit. The alleged spirit only had to be the right gender and roughly the right age for people to decide it was the spirit of the person they were hoping to hear from, even if Stockwell provided information that they didn’t recognise. It struck me that the VIP section that I was sitting in was full of the most hopeful people in the room. They were desperate for validation, and desperate times call for desperate measures. Mixed in with that desperation was hope. Not the hope to be entertained by “Cockney wit”, but the hope for any sign that the people they love haven’t left them forever. They paid extra to be closer to the action, to improve their chances, ever hopeful…
Stockwell served them what they were desperate for, through what struck me as occasionally good cold reading skills with some potentially pre-established knowledge thrown in. It felt as though these hopeful audience members were going through a form of strung-out bereavement, because for as long as you are told you can communicate with the dead and are given a reason to keep believing it, you cannot fully come to terms with the finality of death. For as long as you cannot come to terms with a bereavement, you look for continued validation wherever it can be found. The hope of communication seems to be enough to keep people returning, until their threshold for acceptable evidence of an afterlife communication is reduced to the spirit medium just needing to detect the right gender of their deceased relative before offering some vague platitudes of lives well lives.
Psychics and mediums touring the UK with live demonstrations is not a new thing, but times have certainly changed. Stockwell and other well-established psychics like Sally Morgan or the now-deceased Derek Acorah and Colin Fry, used to tour grand theatres where there could be over a thousand people in the audience on any given night. Now, such tours visit smaller, rural venues that seat a few hundred at full capacity. No new “greats” have risen up the ranks to replace Acorah and Fry, and so the few remaining psychics who were once considered household names trundle on.
General interest in psychic shows appears to be declining among the general population who aren’t willing to pay the still-expensive ticket costs for something we’ve all seen before. That is except for those few devotees who attend show after show, because people like Stockwell are always guaranteed an audience full of the hopeful and desperate.
Yet, sitting in the audience that evening, I felt as though I was watching something once spectacular that had faded and was clinging on. There stood a man who had once performed to thousands now performing to a few hundred. Billboards with his name on now swapped for A3 posters on a sandwich board outside. The psychic medium seemed, to me, as desperate as the audience he stood before, and yet although so much has changed there are some things that never will.
One aspect of the performance that hasn’t diminished is how the deeply Spiritualist tone of the show felt too heavy to be entertainment, the offer of VIP seats felt gaudy, and the platitudes shared felt rehearsed and hollow. Same as it ever was.
