While the World Buskers Festival caters to those who love cabaret, carnies and comedy, it also has something for those who wish to tap into a higher plane. Enter Ian D Montfort, a kaftan-wearing, sandal-clod soft-spoken, mincing Northern psychic who is here to embrace the believers and challenge the skeptics by facilitating dialogue with restless spirits from the other side, reading our auras, and revealing people’s darkest secrets.

The show is a satirical takedown of all manner of pseudoscientific and supernatural claptrap, from spiritualists and tarot card readers to homeopaths and celebrity psychics, but it’s made all the better by the fact that the feats of mentalism are outstanding.

There is a degree of audience interaction, but this isn’t aggressive or confronting. A particularly game ‘volunteer’ in the front row – identified early on as a skeptic with ‘lovely energy’ by Montfort – becomes the target of an ongoing set of psychic rumblings that have an hilarious payoff near the end of the show. 

UK comic, writer, actor and broadcaster Tom Binns, Montfort’s ‘other’ face, won the best international act at the New Zealand International Comedy Festival in 2013 and with good reason. Feats of mentalism aside, this show is a superlative hour of comedy and improv. Binns quickly responds to, and incorporates, offers and reactions from those audience members who are the recipients of messages from the ‘other side’, and the gentle self-effacing nature of his character belies the control that he has over the performance. 

I’m one of those jerks who often sits there trying to figure out how the rabbit got in the hat but in this instance the tricks, the atmosphere and the character are all so immersive and satisfying that I really don’t want to know. Instead I’m happy in the knowledge that Ian D Montfort wipes the floor with the sort of people who, well-meaning or otherwise, make their living off of the vulnerability and incredulity of others, all while provoking people into fits of astounded laughter. Must see.

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Ian D Montfort is a professional psychic from Sunderland, not to be confused with the psycho from the same place, where he helped the police to locate at least eight victims’ bodies. He has set out on a world tour to confound sceptics and help those in need of bringing out secrets. 

Rather than speaking to loved ones dear to us, he communes with spirits we don’t know and makes connections sure to astound and flummox even the most unbelieving. 

As we’re taking our seats, an usher is asking anyone who would like to, to write down a secret on a piece of paper and keep it to themselves, to be used in the show.  When Montford appears, they’re asked to pop the notes in a collection box which are then transferred to a fishbowl at side of stage. 

Without ever picking up a single one of those papers, he proceeds to pepper his show with the secrets submitted.  How on earth does he do it [insert big winky emoticon here]? 

He has several ‘gifts’ that he’s keen to share with us, all the while trying to placate the cynical side of the audience’s nature, from straight-out guess-work to investigative questioning, to Viking Bones and Tarot Cards. 

A campy northerner in sandals and white muslin attire, Montford is played by Tom Binns with a controlled earnestness that obscures a sheer glee for indirectly denouncing frauds and sham carny types that still persist in our popular culture. 

He perfectly captures that false professionalism spouted by those looking to make a quick buck from the easily fooled. 

The show is bookended with intentionally swift disclaimers about the nature of the material on offer here, which if you’re too busy fiddling with your refreshments or car keys you’ll miss: all part of the sleight-of-hand on show here. 

His lines of questioning with willing (and sometimes unwilling) audience members are just vague enough to prove his ultimate point: that around about 85% of these kind of ‘real’ psychic performances are based on guesswork, assumptions or well observed body language. 

When he gets predictions wrong the edges are fudged with a slightly pointed vagueness to bring his point home and to drive the comedy to a higher place. 

A terrifically hilarious and polished hour of audience misdirection, with a big dollop of improvised innuendo and solid dash of the anarchic at its core.

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