INTERVIEW: Psychic medium Sally Morgan ahead of her O2 Southampton Guildhall show

Now a glamorous pensioner, Sally Morgan also insists that her ‘workaholic’ nature means she will not give up her gruelling theatre tours around the UK and Australia even though her detractors wish to “decapitate” her.

Sally revealed she has always worked and she has no intention of stopping now.

Her only break came when she took two years off to care for her daughter who had an infection in her bone marrow when she was four years old. Prior to making a career out of her psychic abilities, she worked as a dental nurse.

“My daughters say I have ADHD. I’m a workaholic. I’d rather that than have no work – that would be horrendous. I have lots of energy – which I’ve needed to do this for the last 30 or 40 years and with such intensity in the last 20 years; where that comes from I don’t know. I’m in my 64th year and it’s gruelling.

“I’m well looked after by my family. My son-in-law drives me and organises the hotels. He makes sure I’ve got bananas for energy and Hum Bugs to suck and bottles of water in the back of the car. Those little things mean a lot and make a difference – they’re like a comfort blanket!” she laughs.

“But on my days off I will go and have a cat nap in the afternoon from 4-6pm and that totally revives me.

Sally says she has always had a psychic gift, but cannot recall exactly when it started.

“It’s only when you are told by someone else that you become aware. I have a grandson who has red hair and he has no idea of the significance of it. He will be called ‘Ginger’ at school and then he will think ‘Yes, I’m different to my friends.’ It was only when I was 11/12 in secondary school that people said to me ‘Are you that girl who says things that come true. I would say ‘no’. It was only as an adult that it registered with me that I’m different because it is only then that you look at the consequences of what you say.

Sally Morgan during one of her shows

“I never set out to make a career out of this. I was inundated with people at the weekend asking for readings. I didn’t keep a diary. People would just knock on my door and it got so bad my husband John said ‘you need to stop them’. But I grew up in the 40s and 50s and working class people didn’t have diaries – they were for putting birthdays in. Only posh people ‘made appointments’.

Fulham born and bred, Sally says she had a “very poor upbringing”, far removed from her ‘psychic to the stars’ status, but adds: “We all felt we were normal as we all had the same. You could leave your front door open all day. No one pinched anything as we all had nothing.

It was very working class. My Mum was a secretary and my Dad was a plumber – they are both still alive. My mum was highly intelligent, but she had me at 16 and my sister at 17 and that stopped her life dead. We went to nursery school whilst she went to work to put food on the table. It was a luxury just to read a newspaper. We never had a phone until I married John. There was no central heating – Mum had to scrape the ice off the inside of my bedroom windows. My ambition was to be a midwife. I never completed my education because there was no money so I had to get a job.”

So how did Sally go from this to giving psychic readings for celebrities – including George Michael and Princess Diana?

“...by just having a practice at home. I never, ever advertised. It’s not rocket science. If I saw a secretary she would tell five other secretaries in her office about me. If I saw a pop star or a member of parliament, then five more people they knew would come. It was word of mouth. I never knew who they were. People would come to my humble house and have a reading and I never asked who recommended me. Someone once said to me’ You’re the best kept secret in London’!

Asked how she became a household name Sally said she has “no idea” how it happened, but she revealed how the controversy over her giving readings to Princess Diana certainly thrust her into the spotlight.

For the first time ever she tells me the woman who spilled the beans to the press about Princess Diana was a client called ‘Hilary’ – my namesake, but totally unconnected with myself!

Sally explains:”A journalist rang me years ago and said ‘Is it true you saw the Princess of Wales on Thursday? – which I denied. She then reeled off a lot of rubbish. But I traced that back to Queen’s Tennis Club. A client of mine, Hilary, had been at the tennis and knew the Princess of Wales.

“That Hilary – Hils, they call her, is the biggest bl**dy gossip! The next time I saw Diana I said to her ‘I’m really sorry you met Hils – she’s the one that went to the bl**dy press. Despite that Diana continued coming to see me. The rest, as they say, is history. TV shows came along for me, but it wasn’t immediate.”

So how does Sally really feel about the negative press, particularly people handing out leaflets opposing her shows and taking to social media to criticise her claims that she receives messages from the dead.

“It goes with the territory. They are always out there and they even plant people in the audience to catch me out! They hate the fact that I’m out there doing what I do. It’s never going to go away.

“It’s like the tide: King Canute stands there saying ”go back” but it will never happen. It’s all relative. When I was a child my teachers dragged me out of the classroom at the age of four and punished me for the things I said. It’s a bigger deal now. It’s the tall poppy syndrome. They want to knock my head off – they want to decapitate me and I have to live with that.”

But her work has left her fearing for the safety of her family as well as her own life.

“I’ve had to put CCTV all round my house as well as gates. It’s incredibly threatening and I worry about my family all the time. My children even have CCTV round their properties.

“In a way it makes me more determined to carry on. It’s made me strong and I think if I can get through the last three years I’ve had, I can get through anything.”

Has she become more thick-skinned?

“No, I really haven’t. I have tight security and have a bodyguard with me all the time on tour. Some of these people are extremist. With social media it breeds extreme people. And they do all their trolling at two, three, four, five in the morning. I don’t read it. I employ a company to do that for me.

“It’s a modern day witch hunt. It’s just like the days when they burnt witches – the Inquisition. If they could pull me off stage and tie me to a stake and burn me, they would.”

So is she not tempted to give it all up?

“I give people hope and I’m a good woman. I’m not bad at all. They are the freaks. Why would I sell up when every theatre is sold out? I have an amazing fan base. They do say the darker the night, the brighter the star.”

To buy tickets, call Ticketmaster UK on 0870 160 2856 or the O2 Southampton Guildhall box office on 02380 632601.