Phil Jupitus - The Clairvoyant

It's been a while since I last put anything in here, which is probably a good sign that I've been a bit busy recently. However, I feel too much has happened since Friday to document, so I shall give you a brief summary of the goings-on, before moving on to the main event!

On Friday, I left at roughly 10:30am for my 2pm presentation meeting at the Metropolitan Police Service Training HQ in Colindale, North London. It was a very good afternoon, with me meeting a couple of other potential candidates and learning a lot about the selection process and the stages to go through before becoming a fully-fledged member of the Special Constabulary. I even learned that, at a random stage throughout the training process, you will get sprayed in the face with CS Spray. Lovely. I got home at roughly 7pm, and despite being rather tired, we went out on the town. It was a pretty average night, with the only "highlight", (if you can call it that), was a rather long and irate justification from a man who looked more like he should belong in My Chemical Romance. His argument was how Robin Van Persie is the best striker in the world, and plays for the best team in the world, Arsenal. No.

Saturday was a bit of a non-event, as plans for a karaoke session blew up as people dropped out like flies. I was sort of expecting it to be honest, and even I was still a bit tired from the night before. I wouldn't have been able to give it 100%, and quite frankly, my amazing singing voice needs to be saved for a time with a bigger audience. Sunday was also a non-event, with the only highlight being correcting a horrific mistake from a losing manager on the laws of Association Football, before the pub quiz, and another session of, "Who Could Cheat The Best".

Which brings us to today. I had told CC that I would accompany him to a rather strange event happening in Milton Keynes. A mix of comedy, music and... clairvoyancy. A strange combination, I'm sure you'd agree, and despite me being possibly the biggest sceptic going, I went along with an open mind. Maybe these people were genuine? (Don't laugh). On the journey up there, we speculated as to what would happen, minorly excited at the prospect of the psychics getting it right. On arrival, we were greeted into the hall by a man who might have been half man, half beast and took a seat. We weren't expecting a bumper crowd of thousands, but were pleased to see roughly 20 people seated at small circular tables with a candle and a bowl full of crap advent calendar chocolate. The event started with a scary looking woman who offered to have our Tarot cards read, (to which we agreed), waited for her to go round other tables, before coming to us. In the meantime, we listened to a decent country singer, (despite her few hiccups), and the beginning of the main act, (which by the end of the night, was to be more entertaining than we expected).

After about 20 minutes, the time had come for our Tarot cards to be read. Me and CC both went into a side room, and chose a card for this scary looking woman to analyse. I chose the 'Authority' card, and listened as this woman vaguely skirted around some of the issues that had come up in my life, especially recently, but never really put her finger on the problem or possible solutions. I was neither impressed nor unimpressed by what she said, and chucked some money at an owl before leaving. Apparently it's superstitious? Whatever. We went back outside to the "main event" and started listening to the host, who would begin an "experiment".

He asked for 5 volunteers, so seeing as I was here to find out what it was about, I put myself forward. I went up to the front, along with 4 women. The host, (who was rather eccentric and... not funny throughout), said something along the lines of, "This young man is a lucky one, in a line full of ladies!" I didn't say anything, as I didn't know what to say, and then he said, "This is the point where you're going to tell me you're gay aren't you?"

I replied with, "Exactly that!" ... There was an awkward silence.

This experiment involved holding a pendulum out in front of you at arms length. If the pendulum started swaying, there was a spirit in the room, making it move. The only problem with this is, after about 10 minutes of holding a pendulum out at arms length, your arm starts to hurt and ache quite a lot. If your arm starts to hurt, it becomes more unsteady, so obviously the pendulum is going to move. The meer fact that they tried to prove that this fact of science was actually spirits, was the beginning of the end for me. I sat back down, and the host did another God awful "experiment" on a lady, that was so bad it made her walk out, before a break.

After the break, a chap called Martin Roberts, the clairvoyant, came on. Martin Roberts had crutches despite having the ability to walk perfectly fine. Martin Roberts is a carbon copy of Phil Jupitus. And Martin Roberts is the worst clairvoyant you can possibly imagine.

I have never been to an event even similar to this. I wasn't sure what to expect, but after witnessing this, I am now pretty sure that I will never be attending anything like this again. It wasn't boring. In fact, it was quite the opposite. It was so bad and so obviously fake, that it slowly got more and more laughable before CC and myself were trying, (and failing), to hold back laughter. This man, Martin Roberts, claimed to hear a lot of voices and spirits in his head. The problem was, that every one of these people was either a woman, always 5ft 2, called either Liz, Edith or Emily. Or a man, always 5ft 11, who was called Bill, Bob or Mark, wore metal-rimmed glasses, smoked a pipe and was in the Army. Every single time. There was even your customary fake crying from a girl at the front, who was so obviously in on the whole thing, it was almost as if these people thought we were mental invalids.

Every now and again, the acts changed, as the country singer came back on, and the scary looking woman came on and did her Tarot Card thing on a member of the audience who was also in on the act. By the end of the night, both CC and I were convinced we were the only members of the audience who were not in on the scheme. By the time Martin Roberts had come back on, for his 3rd attempt at trying to connect to imaginary spirits, connected to the same members of the rigged audience, we had given up. CC was beginning to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, and this set me off. Time passed, and the same people were being dreamt up by this Loony Tune of a clairvoyant, before CC and I could take no more. We were both trying to tell the other to stop laughing as it was embarrassing, but we couldn't help ourselves. The turning point was CC predicting that the woman who the clairvoyant was "speaking to" was 5ft 2 and called Liz, and when Martin Roberts said exactly that, we burst out laughing to a point it was more embarrassing to stay than to get up and leave.

As we stepped outside, I could feel the tears of absolute joy streaming down my face. It was so bad, so outrageously stupid and fake, that it was quite possibly the funniest moment of my 2011. Even CC was crying with laughter, and despite telling ourselves we would stay for the midnight seance, we climbed into the car and drove off. God knows if we had stayed for the seance, we might have actually snapped in half through laughter. Either that or we'd have been kicked out.

On paper, tonight was a complete and utter failure. I could very easily have gone out into town, and enjoyed  a foam party whilst drinking lots of Jack Daniels. In reality though, despite it being astonishingly bad, it became one of the most enjoyable evenings I've had in a long time. The very fact it turned from a dodgy evening, and quite possibly a scam, into a scene of uncontrollable laughter and enjoyment was a recipe that cannot be forgotten.