One night out fishing

In the first of a new series of columns, Matthew Willey catches up with what celebrity medium Kelvin Cruickshank is up to these days.

The dead talk to no-one. Kelvin Cruickshank is either deliberately misleading his audience when he says that they talk to him, or he is deluded. The niceties of putting thought into print mean that I should not assert here which option I think is the case. It's not even a very interesting question.

What is more interesting is sitting in the audience of a charismatic self-promoter, and to watch him ply his trade. Fascinating to sit amongst true believers, to feel their rapt attention, to hear their chuckles and gasps as they are skilfully played like the fish he says he catches. Interesting to watch someone you know is presenting illusion as reality, someone who has honed this delivery to a fine point.

He aimed his speech perfectly at his familiar listeners. For example, he knows about local variation. The show was tuned to a provincial audience and included much about the shallowness of Aucklanders, who didn't want him, but wanted something from him, who didn't know the value of friendship. (Knowing laughter and nods from those seated around me.)

He knows about suspicion of mainstream medicine, and related a heartbreaking story about how doctors tried to medicate his gift away from him, nearly killing him in the process. But just as the show turns mawkish, and before the atmosphere turns leaden, he wheels out the kiwi bloke persona. In this guise he spins stories of everyday life as a famous person. It's not easy.

This kiwi bloke theme was oft repeated, and earned him audible gasps of appreciation from the crowd. He isn't in it for the money, of course he isn't. He has the gift to hear from the dead, to connect them with the living because, you know, they miss us as much as we miss them. But after his breakdown, and after he had been dismissed by his teachers (what do they know, eh?) as never going to amount to much, he decided that his calling would lead him to help others. Because that's what you do, eh? It's the kiwi way.

He also plays a Maori cultural card, and clearly knows that a chunk of his fan base comes from that demographic. And he plays it with the same level of skill and cynicism, talking about his wairua, about sharing kai, about knowing where his kai comes from and how he completes the circle of life. He knows of the higher spiritual being, to whom he also offers blessings, and then just at the point where it becomes unbearably grandiose, he tells us a story about being recognised in the supermarket with his potatoes and carrots, because fame is the price he pays for what he offers people. And we are back with the kiwi bloke just trying to help.

His empire, shoddy though it is, is branching out. There are initiatives such as retreats with Kelvin, and an option to sign up for membership of his spiritual family. You get bracelets and things, oh it's hardly important, the point is the connectedness, the love, the aroha. And he moves on, having planted a lucrative seed of interest in his audience's mind.

And then, again, we switch mood and are treated to a comical story of a gay fortune teller giving Kelvin a tarot reading. Kelvin camps it up, playing the homophobia card not for the first or last time during the evening. Big, appreciative laughs. It's a kiwi bloke thing.

All of this is in some way forgivable. The audience wanted this, they paid for it, and I felt at times that he was as much a product of them as a manipulator of them. But I felt nothing but contempt for the man when he singled out two couples, and publicly flaunted their tragedies for his own aggrandisement. The couples clearly knew him and they were privileged to be, in some way, in his inner circle. People rose in their seats and strained to see these blessed twosomes, and even smiled at them encouragingly as their stories were told, basking in the reflected drama. But their losses and their suffering these pairs had brought, in error and naivety, to Kelvin Cruickshank of all people. And now their horrors have become food for his mesmerising narrative played out on stage. And as Kelvin builds up the rescuing hero, at the last moment he diffidently pushes it away from him with disarming compliments to his hapless stooges. But their healing came from them, eh? It was their love that pulled them through. Kelvin only did what anyone would. The kiwi bloke with the great gift, who only ever wanted to help.

By the time we come to receive questions from the audience, the crowd (some three hundred strong by my reckoning, I wish we could pull a fraction of that for the Skeptics in the Pub) are rapt and it is beginning to take on the feel of a revivalist meeting. Hands shoot up for the microphone, and it is handed to the first questioner.

Q: "I'm interested that you say that the spirits of the dead whisper in different ears depending if they are male or female. Men use mainly the left side of their brain and women use mainly the right side. I wonder if that's got anything to do with it?"

A: "Wow! You must be a scientist. Hey, I don't know, I'm just picking up what they are saying. Did you read a book about it?? You must have read a book about that right? The first book I ever read was my own, Walking in Light (laughter). That was the hardest book I had to write because I had so much to unload."

This was the point where I reckoned I had had my money's worth, and I quietly exited, squeezing past the tragic couple, whose moment of fame had passed, and whose dead daughter had whispered into Kelvin's right ear.