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On Saturday, I was in Selly Oak to deliver a prop to DB's The Shop. It was the first time I'd been, and though it's a cliché, all I can say is WOW!

How can I put this? The Shop is creepy. As you walk into the main room you see a very large round seance table surrounded by 13 chairs. The room is kitted out with the details and spiritual detritus from a real seance room and has an immediate impact. There are all manner of genuine artefacts in there, but that's not all. Further rooms at the back of The Shop contain even more stuff, and even a genuine book on alchemy.

The Shop is a fully realised seance space. Close the door and you'd swear you were back in the '20s or '30s, waiting for the medium to appear in a robe like the ones lining the walls. Switch off the lights and the candle light puts you in a dimension, as they say, not of space and time, but of mind and the great 'beyond'.

Anyone who seriously wants to put on or see a genuinely hard-hitting spook show should check it out. I don't know what the rates are to use it, but the guy is continually adding to and refining the space and the amount of work he's put in really shows. And the super-friendly guys who run the Bohemia restaurant next door make an excellent winter beef stew and dumplings.

The Shop isn't difficult to get to, either. From Birmingham New Street, which is about an hour from London and Manchester, it's the third stop on the local Redditch train.

It was nice of you to give him a 'hand'

Ted wrote:It was nice of you to give him a 'hand'

Indeed!

It's a great place that I love. Did a seance there last year - went splendidly!

Look our for some exciting news hopefully later this week with regard to a new venture, the location of one of these events will be at the Shop.

And shock horror - it won't be a seance. That's right. Gasp. Paul Voodini in non-seance show shock. What is the world coming to?

You're not juggling with kittens or anything like that, are you?

He's finally teaming up with Shrimpton as Chip 'n' Dale.