Richard Madeley meets his match in David Bull

New Reform chair David Bull has been brought into the party by leader Nigel Farage to professionalise his party, and what a start he’s made: by giving an interview in which he claimed the spirit of his dead grandmother travelled in the boot of his car before entering the body of Derek Acorah and being expelled by another phantom who tried to strangle him.

Bull, who has claimed the party was formed in his Suffolk kitchen, was described as “an incredible communicator” by his predecessor, the hokey-cokeying Zia Yusuf, when he was unveiled this week, while Bull himself said his “role is about bringing the two parts of the party together – the voluntary party, the professional party”.

And yet the former TV presenter chose to announce himself to the public in an interview with Good Morning Britain’s Richard Madeley in which the real-life Alan Partridge must have thought he’d finally met his match.

“I’ve had some very odd experiences in the paranormal,” Bull told his interlocutor. “So when I was doing Most Haunted Live! – which was extraordinary, it was the world’s largest ghost hunt, by the way, and we had all of these people watching – but when we came off air, some things happened that I cannot explain.

“So, for example, I was driving through a wood and it was pouring with rain, and I knew someone was in my car. So I stopped my car in the middle of the wood, got into the boot, opened the boot, couldn’t find anyone, got back into the car, drove really fast to the hotel.

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“[Late ghost-botherer] Derek Acorah, who was the paranormal medium at that time, came up to me in the bar and said, ‘You didn’t come here on your own, did you?’. And I said, ‘What do you mean?’. And he said, ‘Your grandmother is with you’.

“So I was, like, OK, and then he started to change facially, he started to channel her, that’s what he said, and then he jumped on me and started to strangle me. And I’m not kidding – I had bouncers in those days, and they pulled the bouncers off me, and then I went to bed. The next day I said, ‘Would you like to explain to me why you tried to kill me overnight?’, and he said, ‘Well, when I was talking to your grandmother it was then hijacked by another evil spirit.”

Even Madeley, who has seen it all, raised an eyebrow. “Well, if he’d have been successful, he would have been hanged by now, wouldn’t he, under your regime?” he said, in reference to Bull’s stated desire this week to bring back executions.

Reform must be delighted they have replaced the loose-lipped Yusuf with someone altogether more stable!