Spiritually speaking

You may or may not believe that but few would doubt that certain things remain inexplicable, beyond the boundaries of science and technology.

Consider a nine-year-old boy, lying in bed.

Earlier that evening he had been playing football by his granddad's house.

He had returned home and, following a portion of chips, had retired to a blissful sleep, only to be awoken by his granddad standing by the bed, tapping the young boy.

"Tell your mother I am gone," he said, leaving the young boy confused although by no means terrified.

"He came to me five minutes after he had died," explained Stephen Holbrook, 32 years later and one of the country's most celebrated spiritualists.

"My mum told me never to tell anyoneha haand look at me now. Telling the world."

Stephen Holbrook was speaking from the Isle of Wight.

Last night it had been Portsmouth, tomorrow Dumfries! Such is Stephen's dizzying itinerary.

The tour sees him performing' in front of a crowd for 324 nights in one year. Every night a blank canvas.

Every night hangs on the mercy of the spirits. Does it ever go wrong?

"Occasionallyand only once or twice a year, I can be standing in front of an audience and, for some reason, the energy just drains instantly away, leaving me stranded," he said.

"It's terrifying when that happens, but there is nothing I can do but apologise. It's not something that it is possible to control."

This rare situation happened on the third night of Stephen's work on a Mediterranean cruise ship last year, as he explained.

"This was a new discipline for me in the sense that normally I play to a completely different set of people in a different town every night. Often the voices are gathering, ready for me.

"But on a cruise, you are around the same people day after day.

"Although I was on the ship for a week, I did three nights of demonstrations.

"The first two nights were fantasticand the third night was fantastic until, in an instant, the voices just drained away.

"It's fascinating for me and I think it proves that the voices come to me, rather than the other way around. I can't go chasing after them."

Stephen's entry into his extraordinary vocation was not exactly assured.

Following the visitation from his granddad, Stephen waited for seven years before encountering another experience.

"I think I possibly did have the vision," he said.

"My mother used to say that I would sometimes see soldiers marching, and things like that.

"But I didn't get more visitations until I was 16. It was in a supermarket in Leeds where we lived. I was reaching for a pizza and I accidentally touched a woman's hand.

"Then a message flashed in my mind and I knew I had to tell her. That was the real beginning. It hasn't stopped since and I hope it never does."

It certainly shows no signs of slowing. In 2002, Stephen gave up the security of his hairdressing job in Leeds to become a full time spiritualist. Two books already chart the extraordinary story. He hasn't had a chance to look back.

"I remember the first time I did a public demonstration," he said.

"It was to about 40 people in Leeds. I was absolutely terrified. The problem is that you just can't plan ahead. I had no idea if I would sense anything or not. It is like a comedian going onstage with absolutely no material. But amazing things happened that night and almost always do.

"That's why I love my job. You just never know what is going to happen. It is a constant source of surprise and amazement to me."

Stephen is obviously more comfortable working with a crowd than on a one to one basis and, since that tentative start, his audiences have continued to increase in both size and, apparently, intensity. I wondered how the demonstrations had progressed since those early days.

"If I am to be honest, I would have to say that they haven't changed at all," he said.

"It's not an act and, as such, it's not something that you can rehearse and build. It's a question of being there, like a telephone exchange, and spirits tend to see me as a way of getting through.

"There can be a large number of spirits all trying to get through at the same time. If I have developed a skill, it's simply a method of sorting this and putting them in contact with the right people. It's an endlessly fascinating process.

"I am not keen on working on a one to one basis and only ever work with a crowd. It is the energy flow of a crowd that I tap intoor rather the energy flow beyond a crowd.

"The actual crowd is usually made up of people who really want to contact a relative, those who are completely sceptical - which I fully understand - and those who really don't want me to approach them. My job really is to prove that there is a life beyond."

Stephen's embryonic career coincided with Jane Macdonald, then a young rising singer who he met at a Leeds spiritualist meeting.

"I told Jane that she would become famous and that it would include some kind of cruise ship," Stephen said.

Only when Jane achieved fame through the first reality television series, The Cruise, did the extent of this vision become apparent.

The pair have remained great friends ever since.

"Her mother called me to thank me. I don't think she could believe how accurate that prediction was. There hadn't even been any reality shows, as such, until that one, so it was a bolt out of the blue."

While perfectly happy to admit that elements of showbiz sprinkle through his performance - "Well, it is a performance and, however in-tune you may be, there is no point in doing this if you aren't prepared to present it in an entertaining manner," - Stephen rightly takes his work extremely seriously.

"Spiritualists should be taken seriously," he said.

"We are here to provide people with proof of an afterlife and my goal really is to prove the survival of the spirit after the bodily death. Obviously there are a good many cynics, and quite right too. But I take great comfort in making them question their doubts."