Controversial Radio DJ Tom Binns talks to Viv Hardwick about his decision to use his Wearside connections to create Sunderland psychic Ian D Montfort.

THERE’S something funny about Sunderland, I thought that was self-evident”

says stand-up comedian Tom Binns in response to my question as to why his spoof psychic Ian D Montfort is advertised as from Wearside.

“He’s obviously a spirit medium and a special kind because he talks to some of the great and the good of history, because he channels famous people… and that just sounds funny in a Sunderland accent,” explains the man acclaimed for his insensitive hospital radio DJ Ivan Brackenbury.

It does help Binns that his father is from Sunderland and the 40-yearold recalls, as a boy, enjoying regular pilgrimages to the city’s Roker Park to watch the Black Cats.

“I’ve found that if I make the accent too caring and cloying – and I’m really making no friends around Sunderland saying this – it comes over as insincere. And all my father’s side of the family are from that area and their accent sounds lovely, but in Ian D Monfort’s case the interest in others is definitely sinister. The very fact he spends his time talking to dead people is sinister enough,” says the man who has already got audiences guessing about whether he’s really psychic or not.

Michael Jackson, Ernie Wise, Charles Darwin, St Joan, Tony Hart, Norris McWhirter, Jeremy Beadle, Reggie Kray and William Shakespeare are among his comedy spirit helpers so far… and the inspirations are endless.

“The original idea was to try and do what Derren Brown does so brilliantly, but make it entertaining. I’m using the tricks and special effects with a different purpose. Every night the audience is thinking of someone famous they’d like to make contact with and then the famous reveal information about the audience member that they couldn’t possibly know.

And often, what is hilarious, is that someone like Hitler is looking after their first pet to die and taking it for regular walks. That sounds ridiculous, but it is quite touching, particularly when you start talking about a favourite hamster and let them know it’s well. But I know it’s time to move on when I see tears welling up in a girl’s eyes,” Binns says.

“Is it down to straightforward trickery or some supernatural happening?

I think it’s probably the former,”

he laughs.

Binns came up with the character and his act after getting stranded in Melbourne when the Icelandic volcano grounded aircraft last year. He discussed his spoof psychic idea with mindreader Philip Escoffey, who is about to be seen in a six-part series on Channel Five.

“Early research sent me to a magic shop and there’s something a bit weird about standing in magic shop as a 40-year-old man when everyone else your age has eight-year-old boys with them. I made a very loud point of announcing that I was there for my work.

“I spent six or eight months picking up the skills and I was lucky to meet Escoffey, who’d just done the Sydney Opera House. I explained to him what I was planning and we worked on it together. He got me up to speed. He said ‘you pretty much know all there is to know, you now need someone who does this on stage to convince you’. I kept thinking ‘these tricks can’t fool anyone’ and it was shocking when my gig was billed as a comedy act at Edinburgh and people were talking to the famous about their house, pets and jobs.

“The last thing I expected was that people thought I was in touch with the other side, but I had a guy in tears at the end of the show. Strangely, if I’d pulled a rabbit out of a hat, people would have said ‘that old trick’ but when you do similar things with people’s thoughts, it’s a whole new ball-game.”

Wisely, Binns steers away from discussing dead relatives.

“When I stumble across dead relatives, I get the hell out of there. Ian D Montfort only does famous people,”

says Binns, who has already generated a fair amount of controversy with his real radio presenting.

His morning show at Londonbased Xfm in the mid-Nineties earned a record £50,000 fine for sexual innuendo but his career in radio continued and his comedy scripts have won awards.

TV appearances have come via Knowing Me, Knowing You… with Alan Partridge, Lee and Herring’s Fist of Fun, BBC drama Spooks and the IT Crowd. However, Binns parted company with Birmingham radio station BRMB in December 2009 after cutting short the Queen’s Christmas Message with the expression “two words bore-ring” and a joke about the monarchy.

So have his Sunderland relatives seen the latest act yet?

“No they haven’t… and one of them is called Ian, and that’s a complete coincidence but I hope he doesn’t take offence. I’m a bit apprehensive about doing a Sunderland accent in Sunderland even though I think I’m good enough to fool anyone below Derby.

“It’s a line I often use when people come up to me after the show and ask ‘are you really psychic?’ and I guess that’s a compliment, although a bit worrying, and I reply ‘No, and I’m not even from Sunderland’. That normally gets me out of an embarrassing scrape.”

On his own belief on the question “is there anybody there?” Binns replies: “I’m not qualified to comment on the afterlife, but I doubt very much that its main conduit to the other side would be Derek Acorah.

I find if very difficult to believe they’d chose a scouser with a dodgy hair colour.”

* Tom Binns is appearing at Inside Out, Darlington, tomorrow at 8pm and Northumbria Students Union On Monday.