Sensing Horseshit

Oh FSM, I feel a wave of nausea and disgust coming upon me - what could it possibly be? Did I eat a dodgy vindaloo? Have I been drinking that vile Green Chartreuse again? Did I just catch a glimpse of The Love Guru? No, its worse than that- the new series of Sensing Money Murder is coming back on the telly, and this time I fear, even more people will be sucked into its black hole of bullshit and milking relatives of dead people for money.

Where to start? Well, back in January of 2006 the first episode of Take 'Em for All They've Got Sensing Murder aired on NZ television, and they've managed to milk it out into a second and now third season of half baked ideas, bad acting and unsubstantiated claims. The show features three Asshats Psychics with supposed paranormal skills, who are taken to locations around New Zealand, shown old case files of unsolved murders or deaths, and then proceed to divine the causes behind the deaths. Like Columbo but without the dude in the trench coat. The producers of the show claim to have the full support of the families of each of the victims, but there is evidence that once they have completed the filming and sucked them dry they refuse to speak to them and don't really give a crap whether the case is solved or not. I'd probably beg to differ on the latter point in that if by sheer fluke they managed to get at least one of the predictions correct, their ratings would go through the roof, so I'd say it is pretty important to them.

The three faux psychics (currently) are Deb Webber, Sue Nicholson, and Kelvin Cruickshank. Deb Webber was amusingly "outed" by an Aussie Investigative News show a couple of years ago, and our man Jeremy Wells on Eating Media Lunch showed this on a segment in his show called Sensing Bullshit.



Its all the same crap that we see every time one of these so called psychics gets on our telly. They spout the same wishy washy crap, vague pronouncements of eeeevil, and generally ham it right up to the point that you think only Kevin Costner could do a worse job of acting.

Recently Tony Andrews posted a challenge to the Sensing Murder team, saying that if they completed a series of tests they could get themselves $10000. The standard fob off response came back from David Baldock, managing director of Ninox Television saying he's not interested in these tests, this "circus approach". He's already tested them. When the show was developed, he auditioned 75 psychics by giving them an obscure but solved murder case to work on. Yeah - right. It was probably things like "which famous australian criminal wore a tin helmet?" or "how many fingers did the famous Wellingtonian Madman Four Fingered Jack have?".

Oh well -I guess the only thing we can hope for here is that the voice of reason is heard, this show goes down the gurgler, or the psychics take up one of the many challenges around to prove they have the powers they claim. I wont hold my breath - thats not how this works in reality. The con artists are too smart to take up those tests when it would spell the end of that particular gravy train.

Check out the article on Stuff for some more background info, and the Aussie BadPsychics site for info on Australasian Scepticism, and their line on Deb Webber.