Yvette Fielding says Most Haunted’s Derek Acorah ‘tried to grope her’
- Yvette Fielding claims ‘fake’ medium Derek Acorah tried to chase and kiss her
- Acorah, who died in 2020, asked sexually explicit questions while ‘possessed’
- The pair famously fell out when he was uncovered as a fraud in Bodmin Jail
Ghost hunter Yvette Fielding claims her Most Haunted co-star Derek Acorah was a fake who tried to grope and kiss her – and on at least one occasion, while pretending to be possessed by a spirit.
Her claims against Acorah follow recent revelations that predatory paedophile Rolf Harris ‘squeezed and patted her bottom’, while she also had a ‘grotesque’ encounter with sexual predator Jimmy Saville as a fledgling television presenter.
In her frank new memoir, Scream Queen, the former Blue Peter presenter reveals how she had believed Acorah – with whom she famously fell out – to be the real deal when she first met him.
But an industry insider had advised her and produced husband Karl Beattie against hiring Acorah, who died at the age of 69 from sepsis following pneumonia in 2020, for their popular show, The Sun reports.
The 55-year-old presenter writes: ‘Just before we started filming one of the presenters at Granada Breeze, who’d worked with him previously said: ‘You can’t use Derek Acorah on your show. I’m warning you, he’s a fake.’
Ghost hunter Yvette Fielding claims her Most Haunted co-star Derek Acorah was a fake who tried to grope and kiss her – and on one occasion, while pretending to be possessed by a spirit
In one incident, Fielding recalls how Acorah ‘proceeded to chase me round the restaurant and I was batting him away because he was trying to ram his tongue down my throat’
In one incident, she recalls how Acorah, who had been drinking, stretched out his arms as if he had been crucified on the cross and proclaimed he was Jesus.
‘He then proceeded to chase me round the restaurant and I was batting him away because he was trying to ram his tongue down my throat.’
She claims that Acorah was ‘always’ trying to kiss her and they laughed it off on that occasion, believing he had too much to drink.
But she recalls there were other moments when he was seemingly ‘possessed’ by a spirit and would say sexually explicit things to Fielding, including repeatedly asking to see her breasts.
Labelling Acorah an ‘egotistical monster’, Fielding also said he was a fraud who often excused himself to go to the toilet during recordings, but was heard on his mic trying to find out information about the history of the place they were in.
‘The crew also got wind that if they said anything within earshot of Derek’s entourage it would come out in an investigation as if from the spirit world.’
That theory was put to the ultimate test in a 2005 episode which saw Acorah appear to become possessed by a spirit at Bodmin Gaol in Cornwall.
Resident parapsychologist Dr Ciaran O’Keeffe, who was sceptical about Acorah’s abilities, said he had set him up by having other crew members feed him false information about spirits in various locations.
Fielding, with Acorah (left) and co-presenter Jason Karl, said the medium was a fraud, adding that ‘the crew also got wind that if they said anything within earshot of Derek’s entourage it would come out in an investigation as if from the spirit world’
The pair appeared on the show together investigating spirits until he was asked to leave in 2006
Acorah, who died in 2020, and Fielding famously fell out, with the former Blue Peter presenter calling him an ‘egotistical monster’
Acorah, who left Most Haunted in 2006, died in 2020 from sepsis following pneumonia
Dr O’Keeffe invented a long-dead South African jailer called Kreed Kafer – an anagram of Derek Faker – and said he was stunned when the TV medium ‘got possessed by my fictional character’ at Bodmin Jail.
In 2006, after Acorah was booted off the show, Ms Fielding told Metro: ‘We tell people everything is real, then it turns out he was a fake, so he had to go.’
Fielding’s memories of Acorah are not the only time she recalls being molested by fellow celebrities.
In recent days she has revealed how predatory paedophile Rolf Harris ‘squeezed and patted her bottom’, while she also had a ‘grotesque’ encounter with sexual predator Jimmy Saville.
Fielding, who joined Blue Peter in 1987 at the tender age of 18, has revealed Australian pervert Harris assaulted her in a TV studio within two years of starting on the show after she found himself alone with him.
At the time Harris – dead of cancer last year at 93 – was one of the BBC’s biggest stars, and it would be another 25 years before he was unmasked as a sexual predator by Operation Yewtree.
TV veteran Fielding says there was a cover-up culture in the TV industry at the time she started.
She said: ‘It was very confusing and shocking — just bizarre to think Rolf Harris was squeezing and patting my bottom and I am standing there, thinking, “I don’t know what to do.”
‘Other people in the industry must have known what he was like and (they) left me alone in the studio with him. That shouldn’t have happened. I must have been 18 or 19. I think a lot of them did know.’
Rolf Harris pictured in 1960. He was exposed as a paedophile following the launch of Operation Yewtree and died in disgrace last year
Fielding says she was left alone with Jimmy Savile (pictured), who stroked her hand and told her to look into his eyes in a ‘grotesque’ encounter
Australian entertainer Harris died almost a year ago in May 2023 from cancer, six years after being released from prison after being convicted of sexually assaulting four girls, one aged just seven or eight years old at the time.
He, like Jimmy Savile, was exposed as a child predator in 2013 by Operation Yewtree, the probe launched following Savile’s death two years before.
Yvette said she had a ‘grotesque’ encounter with Savile in which he took her hand and started stroking it as he said: ‘Look into my eyes and tell me what you’re thinking’.
She added: ‘From what I heard, certain things were brushed under the carpet — and that should never, ever have happened.’
She made the comments in an interview with The Sun.
The BBC apologised in 2016 for its role in allowing Savile and It’s a Knockout presenter Stuart Hall to sexually abuse children on its premises following a brutal report into the culture at the corporation at the time.
