Derek Ogilvie, a British medium who claims to be able to read babies’ minds – a sort of “child whisperer” – is eager to relieve the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) of $1 million by proving his psychic abilities are real.

No formal application has yet been made but his acceptance of the challenge, if it goes ahead, is likely to be the subject of a television documentary. Ogilvie’s work was featured in Channel 5’s reality series, The Baby Mind Reader.

Scottish-born Ogilvie, 41, has been a practicing medium for several years. His speciality came about, he says, during a reading for a mother whose three-week-old child began sending him strong telepathic messages about the family’s life together.

Now, he is called in by parents whose children have sleeping, eating or crying problems that do not respond to conventional cures. Fiona McCade, writing in The Scotsman last year (15 June 2006) told of her own experience when he visited her and her 10-month-old son, for whom meal times were a battleground, because he was still treating solid food with suspicion, and whose sleep patterns were erratic.

“Ogilvie began by pacing up and down the room, eyes closed and without making any physical, or eye, contact with me or my son,” she wrote. “He reeled off a vast string of informational snippets and questions, many of which meant little or nothing to me, others which he could have safely predicted would mean something to many women in my position….

“Later on, I observed to Ogilvie that Junior’s information was unexciting. But then Ogilvie said my baby was relaying something which happened when I was seven months’ pregnant.

“’He's showing me movement. There’s fluid around him and he’s being moved and he’s saying to me: “What the hell was that?”’ I laughed at this, but Ogilvie wasn’t amused. ‘It’s not funny. It’s not been explained to him and it’s scared him.’

“It’s absolutely true that, as a foetus, Junior did experience an unusual movement in the womb at seven months’ gestation (a mechanical intervention), and Ogilvie could not possibly have known that, but what did that have to do with anything now? Apparently, quite a lot. According to Ogilvie, this fear of being shaken and shifted was the reason Junior was not settling at night and I needed to reassure him. ‘What’s important for your child may not be important to you, but you should still respect them. Talk things through, put yourself in their shoes. It’s all about mutual respect.’”

How will this translate into taking Randi’s $1 million challenge, whose rules were changed recently?

Apparently, Ogilvie says that he will be able to tell which object out of a possible 10 a child picks up, in another room out of his sight. If he gets six out of 10 right, he’ll claim the $1 million prize.

Randi, however, says he hasn’t even received an application from Ogilvie – hinting that, like others in the past, he might be claiming to have accepted the challenge just for the publicity.

Tony Youens, a British sceptic, has confirmed however that he has been in talks with a TV production company that is interested in filming Ogilvie’s attempt at winning the paranormal prize money. In a posting on the JREF Forum website, Youens added:

“The production company later contacted Randi and suggested a specific test [similar to that described above] which in principle seemed okay. However, Derek Ogilvie has still not submitted a formal application, although that is possibly due to the requirements of the production company rather than Ogilvie himself, and therefore no preliminary test has either been designed or considered and won’t be until the application has been received.”

He adds: “The actual preliminary test might be entirely different depending on what is eventually claimed. To date there has been no direct communication between JREF and Ogilvie.”

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