Sensing comedy but no murder
They call him ‘‘The Kelvinator’’, but not because he’s big, or cold, or full of slowly decomposing food. No, it’s because his name is Kelvin, and he reckons he can speak to slowly decomposing citizens. He sees dead people. Talks to them, too. Kelvin Cruickshank likes nothing better than a good old chinwag with the dearly departed.
The former chef reckons he started ‘‘seeing spirits’’ at the age of 4, and this alleged ‘‘gift’’ has become a tidy little earner. As a professional medium, Cruickshank has released six bestselling books, and appeared as a ‘‘psychic detective’’ on TV2’s hit surreality show Sensing Murder. He hosts holiday retreats in Vanuatu for the spiritually inclined, and regularly traipses from Northland to Invercargill giving public ‘‘readings’’ on his lucrative Soul Food live tours.
Cruickshank and assorted invisible Caspers performed in Nelson to a soldout crowd last Sunday. The ticket price of $65 had scared off the sceptical to ensure a crowd packed with true believers. Except for me. As a psychic, I wonder if Cruickshank already knows that people like him really p... me off.
People are welcome to believe whatever they like, of course. But believing something, no matter how fervently, doesn’t make it so. And it’s not just harmless fun when Cruickshank shows up on Sensing Murder, claiming to deliver messages about the final painful moments of some poor family’s long lost daughter. Across four series, the Sensing Murder psychics haven’t delivered a single useful lead.
Fortunately, Cruickshank’s live stage show is lighter, funnier and flakier than the TV series, with the warmly communal feeling of an old-school church revival meeting. He has an engaging stage presence, an act scattered with rude anecdotes: funny ha-ha as well as funny peculiar.
But some of the funniest lines came not from him but from his audience. Following a line of enquiry with a slightly deaf old dear about the spiritual whereabouts of someone named Patrick, he asked: ’’Where’s Pat?’’ The woman replied: ’’Yes. You’re right. I have always banked with Westpac.’’
The three-hour show was as slick as an oiled eel. But his technique was pure Medium 101 ‘‘cold reading’’: a mix of open questions, pop psychology, close observation and guesswork based on statistical likelihood.
It was a hoot, a blast, a circus of sorts. It was as crazy as a Trump rally. I loved it and hated it at the same time. At one point, Cruickshank channelled somebody’s dead pet possum. I am not making this up.
I felt like the sole dissenter: a teetotaller at a rave, a chemist at a homeopathy convention.During the interval, I admitted to a couple of women that I found it all, you know ... weird. They said I should lighten up. I headed down to the bar, and when I got back, the woman on my left had made a little drawing for me – a tiny, floating ghost, and out of its mouth in a speech bubble. It said: ‘‘WHOOOOOOH!’’.
It was a hoot, a blast, a circus of sorts. It was as crazy as a Trump rally. I loved it and hated it at the same time.