RIP Billy Roberts

Famous TV medium Billy Roberts who made Padstow his home dies

An internationally-renowned psychic who moved to Cornwall because it was "the most spiritual place in the UK" has died. Billy Roberts passed away peacefully at home in Trevone near Padstow where he had moved to 10 years ago.

Mr Roberts previously said he decided to settle in the Duchy which he had been visiting on a regular basis since 1985 because “Cornwall is steeped in paranormal history”. The medium, who was one of the UK’s leading television and stage mediums and the author of more than 30 books said at the time of his relocation to Padstow: “People here also have a strong interest in esoteric subjects. It’s a beautiful place to be and it feels like home.”

Mr Roberts who spent 12 months on the popular show Most Haunted and appeared on the TV series Living with Angels and Demons, was born in Liverpool. He came from a family of mediums with his mother, grandmother and aunt being all psychics. In various interviews over the years he said he had been in touch with the spirit world all his life.

In an interview with the Cornish Guardian he said: “I’ve been psychic since I was a child and seeing so-called ‘dead’ people was commonplace to me. I grew up thinking everybody was the same as me; of course they weren’t.” He first became aware of his gift when as a child he became ill with a serious bronchial disease called bronchiectasis.

“I spent a lot of time in hospital, and the doctors told my parents they didn’t expect me to survive. That experience brought me in to close contact with the spirit world,” he told CornwallLive’s sister paper. “When I was 9, the education board advised my parents to send me to a child psychologist because I was giving my teachers messages from the spirit world, which didn’t go down well in the late 1950s.”

But by the time the young Billy left school at 16 he had channelled much of his energies into music. He began his working life as a musician in 1962 playing lead guitar in a professional rock band. He lived between Paris and Brussels, supporting such names as The Moody Blues, The Yardbirds, Chuck Berry, Memphis Slim and Jimi Hendrix.

He returned to Britain weighing just 6st, burnt out from a life of excess. In his interview back in 2012 he said: “In those days the music business was full of drugs and I became addicted to a wide range of substances. After stints in clinics on the continent and back home in Liverpool I decided to try meditation, and thanks to that and strict mental discipline I managed to get free from my addictions.

“At this point I realised the psychic forces that had been blotted out by my music and lifestyle were still strong within me, and in 1982 I decided to become a professional medium.”

In 1983 he founded The Thought Workshop, the first centre for psychic and spiritual studies and alternative therapies in the north of England. From there, he went on to present his own television series on the paranormal and wrote dozens of books on the matter.

He set up the Billy Roberts Paranormal Study Centre in Liverpool’s Penny Lane and featured on the TV programme Most Haunted. He said: “Padstow is very different to the other places I’ve lived and worked in; it’s spiritually warm, like a different world.”

Mr Roberts passed away on March 12. He was 75.