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She’s the sun-loving TV psychic with the bright pink hair, broad Birmingham accent and million-miles-a-minute banter. He’s a mild-mannered man of few words who built their fourstorey home with his bare hands and dreams of visiting the Canadian Rockies. It’s fair to say Sensing
Murder medium Sue Nicholson and her husband Steve are opposites in nearly every way. But that, they reckon, is why they’ve been happily married for four decades and why Steve, a retired engineer, is now Sue’s manager.
“Forty years!” beams Sue as the couple chat to Woman’s
Day in the lounge of their Lower Hutt home, which they share with their beloved terrier-cross Leo.
“Not bad, is it? Even if he did buy me an ‘In Sympathy’ card by mistake for our first wedding anniversary!”
Since she started as one of three psychics helping detectives to solve cold cases on Sensing Murder 10 years ago, Sue, 62, has had her fair share of ups and downs, including some serious health troubles and regular abuse from internet trolls.
But through it all, Steve, 61, the father of her daughters Samantha, 38, Sacha, 34, and Sarah, 32, has remained her biggest fan.
“It can be very lonely, doing what I do,” tells Sue, who was selected from dozens of psychics across Australia and New Zealand to work on the recently revived TVNZ 2 show.
“When Steve and my daughters first saw me on TV, they had a shock because I don’t really talk about what I do,” tells Sue. “I’m also very critical of myself because I’ve been bullied all my life, but Steve is fantastic. He’ll say, ‘How did you know all that info? It’s incredible!’”
Sue’s anxieties are understandable given her poverty-stricken childhood in 1950s England. Born to an alcoholic father and a verbally abusive mother, she craved love and an escape, becoming engaged at 21 to a violent boyfriend who “beat me black and blue”, and left her for another woman just six weeks before they were due to marry.
Devastated, Sue barely left her home until, in November 1975, a friend convinced her to go to a nightclub, where she met a shy engineer on the edge of the dance floor. Within seven weeks, smitten Steve had proposed and they married in 1977.
“It was probably the most romantic thing I’ve done for her,” he grins.
After their eldest daughter turned one, the lovebirds winged their way to Wellington, where Steve had scored an engineering job. “A spirit told me I was going somewhere far away,” recalls Sue, who says she has three regular spiritual guides, including a Chinese doctor and an elderly lady. Nevertheless, when they first arrived in Aotearoa, settling in Wainuiomata, Sue struggled to adapt.
True predictions
She tried out a number of different jobs, including office work and hosting Tupperware parties, while raising her happy family and honing her psychic abilities, but it was only when
Sensing Murder producers contacted her in 2005 after hearing about her skills that her career took off.
Steve recalls how it was just a few years earlier that his wife had revealed she’d been seeing, hearing and sensing dead people since she was four. He remembers, “I said, ‘OK, whatever.’ I wasn’t a believer as I’m an engineer by trade, and things are pretty black and white for me, but there’s no rhyme or reason as to why she gets these things.”
Sue correctly predicted that Steve’s dad would be diagnosed with cancer and even experienced her fatherin-law’s childhood memories with him as he lay dying in a hospice. “Steve doesn’t always listen to me, though,” she smiles. “I told him not to buy a car because the passenger front wheel would fall off ...”
Steve continues, “I decided to buy it anyway, but Sue was so insistent something was wrong, she made me take it back to the dealership for a check. As I was driving, the wheel came off and bounced down the road, just missing some people drinking coffee. And yes, it was the passenger front wheel!”
The couple decided to work together five years ago after Steve had finished building their dream home, complete
with a movie theatre, a pool room and sea views. But Sue, who’s touring NZ this month, tells they aren’t the only ones who live there.
“Our house is full of spirits,” she says. “They do things like turn on the TV sometimes. It’s annoying! I have to take control because it’s my house and they’re dead. I’m not having them taking over!”
But she says the visions are the strongest at her live shows. She shudders, “I see people hanging from the ceiling or with a gun in their mouths, blowing their brains out. It’s not nice.”
As talk turns to an upcoming holiday in Canada, Sue smiles, “I don’t like the cold, but Steve wants to go. We’ll go to the Rockies and then hopefully end up on the beach in Hawaii, so we’ll both be happy. We really are a case of opposites attract, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”