I was unfortunately enough to stumble on an audience with Derek Acorah whilst channel hopping last night. I usually applaud the guy for putting on a tremendous show when talking to the little ghosties but this show was embarrassing.

It did get me thinking though, what if I could build a little box with a built in screen which will flash up questions from ‘the dead’ for the living, it would make old Derek a little redundant. First things first though, I will make a virtual version, something along the lines of a little Wordpress plugin where at the click of a button a question appears from the other side.

The questions will be completely random and will be built using randomly generated numbers which will determine the question’s contents. Looking at the diagram below for example, table 1 could contain names so the question could maybe start with “Hello, my name is [Random Number]” where the randomly generated number references the row in the Name table to pull through a name to complete the statement.

A simple idea but one which could achieve some clever results. You could take it a step further, adding more tables e.g. objects and then adding rules between them to ensure the grammar is correct - like rows 5-10 of table 2 require something plural from table 3 to ensure it reads correct.

I’ve penned a quick attempt and the basics of the Acorah code seems to work, the biggest effort would be prefilling the tables with the information. The bigger the tables, the less likely you are to be asked the same question.

So if you want to know where one of your ancestors buried their fortune or why your cat decided to run away when you were a kid, stay tuned.