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Psychic TV

Psychic TV presenters
  • Posted at 10:44am
  • 10 October 2007
  • by RhodriMarsden-RT
  • 3 comments

You can't fault Psychic TV on its marketing. Its adverts feature a carefree, newly confident woman whose destiny has been mapped out thanks to the channel. She needed to know how her career would pan out; she consulted the psychics; they told her; and now she's getting on with her life, absolutely safe in the knowledge that she's never going to be run over by a juggernaut. Probably.

If you've not seen Psychic TV, here's the score. You either text in your poorly punctuated, barely decipherable problem, eg "I'm goin out on Fri wiv mates frm work culd u tell me if I will find luv and wot will he loklike?", or you phone in and leave a voicemail message outlining your dilemma which is then replayed in the studio – thus neatly avoiding the embarrassing possibility of a caller confronting the psychics by screaming, "Lies! Lies! It's all lies, I tell you!".

You then receive a live reading from a psychic, who sits alongside a youthful presenter who is thrilled at getting her foot on the TV ladder, not realising that the number of rungs has increased dramatically in the past few years and she may never get further than extolling the virtues of a five-day break in Thessaloniki on SkyTravelShop.

The psychics don't have a great deal to go on. There are scant details provided – they don't know the subject's socioeconomic classification, their state of health, or whether they're about to attempt a dangerous stunt involving paraffin.

Actually, some of them do give their date of birth or their star sign – for all the good that might do – but whatever the query, the psychics have the same procedure: they shuffle their pack of tarot cards in a clumsy fashion, lay six or seven of them out on the table, and use the supposed information therein to forecast the unknowable.

"Can you tell me if me and my girlfriend will marry?" asks one man. "Will her four-year-old boy come to look at me as a father?" The psychic is delighted to produce both the "Happy Ever After" and the "Dreams Coming True" cards. These particular cards show up with unerring frequency.

Cards with the names "Trampled by Herd of Cattle" or "Oh No! Immersed in Bathtub of Effluent" are noticeable by their absence. Because this isn't about predicting the future. Of course it's not, it's about reassurance.

But the presenter continues to stress the clarity of the predictions, and how they can shine an illuminating light upon your life.

The psychics don't just rely on the information supposedly contained within the cards, of course. No, sometimes they'll pause, adopt a faraway look, and say, "Yes, I'm getting something, I feel that you've had an abandonment programme that has been running for several hundred lifetimes". Or, in other words, "I'm guessing that you're a bit unhappy". Of course they are, they're turning to Psychic TV for help.

This channel masks such desperation that I end up feeling truly sorry for those people who call in. The presenter attempts to hammer home the message that we can trust these "new-school" psychics they employ, rather than the "old-school" types who used crystal balls and whose palms you had to cross with silver.

But there's no difference, none whatsoever. They're both talking utter drivel. And at least the old-school psychics had a bit of theatrical zeal, and didn't charge you £1.50 per minute from a BT land line.

Psychic TV is on Sky channel 886.

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Comments

  • Posted on 12 October 2007
  • at 1:52pm
  • by CarsmileSteve

wot, no genesis p. orridge jokes?

  • Posted on 11 October 2007
  • at 1:16pm
  • by dickoon

Do you take requests/recommendations, please, Rhodri?

I'd love to see what you do to Indecent Proposals, on My Channel. It's safe for work, despite the name, and lives on 176. Given how short a journey up the scale you have to make, how bad can it be?

  • Posted on 10 October 2007
  • at 12:46pm
  • by robsoft

Excellent. Another quality TV institution.

If I were one of the psychics (and there's no reason why I couldn't be - I'm just as bloody qualified to pick cards from a pack and then ad-lib accordingly) then I'd have my own unique 'extra' that I'd insist on doing at least once a show.

I'd suddenly stare off into the distance... grab my head in anguish... "Wait! wait.... Geoff from Croydon, trying to get through psychically... Geoff, Geoff - I can't quite hear you... (screw face up in concentration) I can't quite receive your thoughts.... pick up the phone, Geoff. Pick up the phone and call me instead. It's only 25p a minute, from a BT land line, on (insert number here). Pick up the phone Geoff. Get in touch properly."

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