The world of spirit is closer than many of us think, at least according to the many spiritualist mediums who ply their trade on television these days.

At one time, those seventh sons or daughters of seventh sons or daughters could be seen in draughty spiritualist church halls, at the end of seaside town piers and, before that, standing on the backs of carts on market day.

The plethora of digital TV channels has given the mediums a whole new, well, medium these days, and the schedules are stuffed full of programmes featuring varied psychics with different unique selling points. One's a hairdresser, one's very restrained and perhaps the most famous one, who I went to see on Friday night, has the gimmick of being a Scouser who can perform a funny little dance when either pos-sessed by a playful 18th Century child or attempting to lighten the atmosphere during his shows.

Derek Acorah is the star of Living TV's Most Haunted which, if you're a cheapskate like me and don't get Sky TV, you can watch on the Freeview channel FTN.

Was the star of Most Haunted, I should say. Derek, an affable, grey-haired chap with a liking for sharp suits and who once had trials for Bill Shankly's Liverpool, has recently quit the show amid rumours of a rift between him and the show's presenter and producer, former Blue Peter presenter Yvette Fielding.

He's a very likeable man, as well, and obviously appeals to women of a certain age - there were certainly enough of them in the sell-out show at St George's on Friday night.

I had high hopes for Derek being able to turn me from someone with a sceptical-leaning open mind to someone a little more believing in the existence of a spirit world, but I'm afraid his show on Friday night didn't quite convince me.

I'm not quite sure why - Derek is a consummate professional with a high-profile reputation to maintain and ignored several chances to foist the spirits on people who were dredging up only tenuous connections with the information he was relaying through his spirit guide, Sam.

It was just that at least 99 per cent of the audience already seemed to be totally convinced in Derek's claims, and as thus the whole place was extremely receptive to what he had to say.

It would be interesting to see how his show panned out to an audience of total sceptics. There might be less readiness to take as read that he was indeed channelling spirits, but he surely would have scored much greater victories by convincing non-believers of his calling. The fact is, of course, that you're not going to fill St George's Hall with sceptics at £17 a head.

So while many people would have left Bradford on Friday convinced of Derek's abilities, I'm afraid I was erring on the side of more earthbound explanations for his dialogue with members of the audience - they were too willing to be caught up in it all, they were grasping at half-meanings.

However, I remain open-minded. Trevor Howard might have said in the criminally-underappreciated Vivyan Stanshall film Sir Henry At Rawlinson End "Afterlife, aftershave - don't believe in any of it", but while I didn't come home believing in ghosts, Derek's performance by the same token didn't convince me he was a total fake.

Should any spirits reading this want to convince me of the existence of an afterlife by, say, e-mailing me next Saturday's winning Lottery numbers, then I promise I shall do my level best to treat the communica-tion with respect.