Hairdresser turned medium Stephen Holbrook sees himself as a telephone exchange from this world to the next. He tells Lindsay Jennings about miracles and messages from Marti Caine.

"DOES anyone have a picture of their husband in a frame with them here tonight?" Three hands shoot up into the air. Medium Stephen Holbrook strides up and down the central aisle in the main room of Darlington's Dolphin Centre, microphone in hand, scanning the audience.

"Yes, my love. Do you have a picture of your husband?" he says, pointing at a hopeful-looking lady.

"I've got one in my purse," she says eagerly. "That's a sort of frame, isn't it? And it used to be in a frame."

Another woman in a black top chips in: "Mine used to be in a frame too, I cut it down to put it in my purse."

Stephen continues pacing, a slightly exasperated look crossing his tanned features. The predominantly female audience sits in rapt silence.

"No, no, it's definitely in a frame. Does anyone else have one?"

He pauses. "Hang on. Does the 18th mean anything to you? We have the frame, the husband and I think it's the 18th of November."

The hopeful lady with the photograph of her late husband shoves her hand up again and says it's a close relative's birthday on that day.

"Yes," says Stephen, visibly relieved at having found his recipient. "Sometimes it's very difficult to know what the spirits are trying to say."

He goes on to give the lady various messages from the "other side", including one from her late husband who's sending healing thoughts to help with her bad back. He looks every inch the showman with his golden tan and highlighted blonde hair, but his messages are delivered with a gripping mixture of compassion and comic timing.

"Hey, they're getting up a bus trip together this lot," he quips, to a woman whose relatives are queuing up to talk to her.

Stephen, 38, known as Steve to his friends, first realised he had a gift for clairvoyancy when he was nine years old and he woke up at 4am to find his granddad standing beside him in his favourite purple cardigan. Sitting in the Dolphin Centre's caf before his show is due to start, he says he remembers the moment vividly.

'He told me 'I've gone, go and tell your mother," he says in his broad West Yorkshire accent. "So I did, and she said 'where's he gone to?' and I said 'I don't know'. The following morning he learned his granddad had died. His mum told him never to mention the incident again, adding ominously: "Look what happened to Auntie Pauline".

He never did find out what happened to Auntie Pauline, but his next "experience" came when he was 16 years old and shopping in Asda. Steve was reaching for a pizza when he accidentally brushed a lady's hand and heard a voice in his head saying: "Tell her it's Michael. It's her son, I only died in September, and wish Chloe a happy birthday."

Somewhat nervously, he passed on the message.

"She just burst into tears," he says, his piercing blue eyes widening. "But I had to tell her. It was then I realised what the messages could mean to people."

After the incident in Asda's frozen section, his head began to fill with more voices and, thinking he was going mad, he turned to his doctor for help. But while he thought he would be given tablets to make the voices go away, the doctor suggested he had a gift, and sent him to a spiritualist church.

It was at Wakefield Spiritualist Church that he met the singer/entertainer Jane McDonald, before she became famous on the BBC reality show The Cruise.

"We were the only two people in there under the age of 50," he laughs. "We got talking and we've been best friends ever since."

The church was, he says, "like coming home". He realised that he wasn't going crazy and that there were other people like him. He also learned to control the voices, switching them off by relaxing and "tuning out".

There was one night, however, when he was driving along the M62 in his Austin Maestro that a rather famous entertainer whispered in his ear.

"It was Marti Caine," he says earnestly, putting his hand on mine. "I could hear her voice, it was all gravelly, like she used to talk, and she said to me, 'I'm going to help you and Jane McDonald'."

Steve recognised her name but didn't know too much about the 70s television star until he spotted a book on her at a jumble sale. When he finally got around to reading it, he says a slip of paper fell out advertising a church event with guest speakers S McDonald and J Holbrook.

"I couldn't believe it," he says. "The initials were mixed round but the names were ours. My wife said, 'what do you think she's going to do?'"

Nothing happened, he says, until several years later when his wife, Caroline, had a lump the size of a 50p piece removed from her neck. The family feared that she had cancer and the surgeon had warned him to expect the worst, based on what she had seen when she removed the lump. But when the test results came back, there was unexpected news.

"She said to me, 'do you believe in miracles, because the scans show nothing, and all I can tell you is I know what I saw when I opened your wife up'.

"To this day she has blood tests every six weeks and she's fine."

And does he believe Marti had something to do with it? "I know she did," he says, emphatically.

Marti never came to him again (although he would love to hear from her) but Steve successfully predicted that Jane McDonald would go on a cruise ship where there would be television cameras and that it would be the making of her. Jane went on to present talent show Star for a Night - a remake of Marti Caine's programme, New Faces.

He gave up hairdressing four years ago when he found his clients were only booking appointments to hear messages from the other side. He now takes his Evening of Clairvoyance (he calls his gift "clair-audient" because he cannot see spirits, only hear them) around the country and has brought out two books based on his life story, Out of this World and The Light in the Darkness.

He says he has been made television offers, but that he's happy doing what he's doing, going on tours. His mum, Margaret, helps out with the box office and he's raised in excess of £47,000 in three years for Wakefield Hospice.

Some may say that he takes advantage of people who are at their most vulnerable. But he replies: "You only have to see the sheer joy and the elation on people's faces when they receive a message from their family to know that's not true."

Later that evening, Steve is pacing up and down once more. Two women tentatively raise their hands when he asks for a pair of sisters who have lost their mother this year.

"She says her right leg is better now," he tells them, kicking his leg up and down in the air. "Hey, I'm like Linford Christie now, she's saying, do you understand that my love?" The pair nod emotionally.

Some of the messages could be considered vague - but others are pretty accurate as Steve comes up with various names, dates and eccentric characteristics of loved ones.

"I'm being told to mention tortoises," he tells one lady, before she reveals her aunt and uncle used to have them. Another woman nods her head as her husband pops up to say he regrets that he was tight with money when he was alive.

At the end of the show, Steve thanks everyone for coming. The two sisters have wiped away their tears and are chatting animatedly. "Good night and God bless," shouts Steve. "See you next time."

* Stephen Holbrook will be holding an Evening of Clairvoyance at the Hambleton Forum in Northallerton tomorrow at 7.30pm. Tickets £9. For more information contact (01924) 898688.