Mark Gatiss takes on a spooky mission

It may sound like another desperate Alan Partridge pitch, but the League Of Gentleman's Mark Gatiss is to go ghost-hunting with Rev Richard Coles for a Radio 4 special this Christmas. 

Gatiss has spent much of his career writing about ghosts – from updating Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) to a stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol – but he's never actually seen one.

But Coles – the former Communards star turned vicar turned radio personality – does believe he's had brushes with the supernatural. So he invited Gatiss to visit his former parish in Finedon, Northamptonshire, reputedly the most haunted in England to try to encounter a spirit.

Stories linked to the town include the Dutch Doll of Finedo, a wooden doll that sat above a door at the Girls Charity School, attached to a mechanism causing it to move when the door was opened.

It was believed that the doll had the supernatural ability to walk around, which led to legends about the doll's feet being chopped off. It is known that children would be threatened with the punishment of being locked in a cellar with the doll.   

The doll was moved to the Church of St Mary the Virgin in 1961, but mysteriously went missing 1981. Coles took over as vicar of the church in 2011 but stood down in May this year.

Gatiss and Coles regularly exchange messages on Twitter and Mark Gatiss last Christmas interviewed each other about their beliefs and thoughts about life and the afterlife for the Radio Times.

During that conversation, Gatiss agreed to visit Cole's parish.

The vicar said: 'My parish is famously haunted. Our ghosts were so famous that there was an ode written about them and printed in the newspapers in the 18th Century.  We have a grey lady and a black lady – though I think the grey lady might be the black lady, just a little underexposed – and she goes up and down Holly Walk. 

'There’s a corner marked just at the top of Church Hill, where a couple of people, and I too,
have felt someone rush past in distress at a point when there has been no one there. My friend, who is First Nation Canadian, thinks there was a lot of trouble here during the Civil War and it’s the memory of that. But who knows?'

Mark Gatiss and Richard Coles Are On A Ghost Hunt will air on Radio 4 at 10.15pm on Christmas Eve.

The show has been announced today as part of BBC Radio's Christmas line-up.

Also returning is the World Service's Arts Hour New Year International Comedy Special.

This year's showcase will be compered by South African comedian Tumi Morake and features Uganda's Cotilda,indigenous Australian comic Dane Simpson, Italy's Luca Cupani and Britain's Lauren Pattison.  

It will air at 8pm on New Year's Eve.
 
 

Published: 28 Nov 2022