Cold-reading, fishing, taking the bait.

In one show that I've just watched tonight, John Edwards said that his "target's" dead mother was holding a white mouse. His target - a middle-aged man - confirmed that he had white mice as a child, and indeed his own children have them now. John Edwards' response was to call-out the sceptics, saying something along the lines of "just how could I have possibly known about that".

This show isn't about closing emotional doors between living and dead relatives. It's about John Edwards "proving" to us just how good he really is.

Common start-up topics:

"I'm getting a reading from a mother who has crossed"

That wouldn't draw a positive reaction from me, as my mother is still alive. If my father were sat next to me however, then bingo John, you have your target.

"Something to do with the month of January"

Well, a one-in-twelve chance that that could be the birth month of my father's mother. Not bad odds at all. But it doesn't stop there. In my immediate family (my mother, father, sister, and I), we are born in March, August, September and October. So the odds are reduced even further - providing a 1 in 4 opportunity that John Edwards could cling to. But it needn't stop there. My grandmother was born in December, my grandfather in February. My grandmother's brother in July. Her two other children (my aunts) in May and August. But it needn't stop there. It need not relate to a birth month at all. It could relate to a month in which someone close to either my father or his mother died, a wedding, a divorce, a christening, getting, or losing, a job. A finite number of possibilities in which John Edwards can (re)direct his subsequent reading. It just so happens that my grandmother died in January. So Bingo. No need to fish anymore, the bait has now well and truly been cast.

"I'm getting a name, something with a prominant A."

The fishing once again sets its wheels in motion. Does it relate to a person's name - Alan, Amanda, Arthur, Abigail, or even 'Arry perhaps. No positive response will result in an extension of this "connection". It could relate to a school, a company, a street, a medical condition. It just so happens that my father's name is Albert. Ok, now this is getting freaky!!!

"She wants to tell you something. Not to worry about..."

And so the fishing starts again. We all have worries. Relationship, professional, personal. This is a wide net in which to draw in your target. A target who is most probably becoming so impressed with the "psychic" knowing a) his mother is dead, b) she died in January, and c) his name is Albert. He will no doubt have forgotten about just how vaguely the "psychic" drew out these conclusions, by focusing upon the details that are seemingly so specific and personal to him. He may, in his increased gullable state, actually start to reveal details in which the "psychic" will respond with a comment that seems to reaffirm his own knowledge of his subject - "yes, that's becoming clearer to me now" before delving deeper into that particular area.

And all the while, his target, and indeed the audience in general, sit there, open-mouthed at the seemingly very real happening that the "psychic", John Edwards, really is in communication with the dead.

Bertram Forer has never met you. Yet he offers the following opening gambit about your life:

"Some of your aspirations tend to be pretty unrealistic. At times you are extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary and reserved. You have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. You pride yourself on being an independent thinker and do not accept others' opinions without satisfactory proof. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety, and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. Disciplined and controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside."