Can he read babies’ minds?

Is he the answer to every hassled mother’s prayer? Or a cynical trixster who plays on parental anxieties? What’s not in question is Ogilvie’s perfect timing. Parenting is the new trend in reality TV, with programmes such as Supernanny and Wife Swap.

The first documentary in The Baby Mind Reader series tells the story of Ogilvie’s work with Emma Etwell, a 19-year-old single mum from Southend-on-Sea, and her 21-month-old daughter Teegan. The toddler screams constantly and has not slept through the night since the day she was born.

Within days of meeting Ogilvie, the family has been transformed. Teegan is sleeping through the night. Not only that, she has apparently told Ogilvie that she will behave better if she gets a trampoline and a princess costume, and she would prefer to eat fresh food instead of the processed muck she is usually fed.

Rather more alarmingly, she has also told Ogilvie that Emma was raped as a 14-year-old, and that one of the reasons for the toddler tantrums is that she too fears that she will be raped when she grows up. She wants her mummy to come to terms with this trauma so they can all be happy again.

All this from a 21-month-old girl who cannot yet speak, count, read, write or go to the toilet unaided.

Emma, however, is a believer. “I don’t want her living in my past. If I sort myself out then maybe she will sort herself out through that.”

To cap his time with Emma and her family, Ogilvie gets to the root of her relationship with her mother Wendy. He discovers telepathically from Teegan that Wendy had a miscarriage when she was younger, which led to a bout of heavy drinking. Wendy and Emma resolve their differences, and Ogilvie leaves a family apparently healed by his psychic intervention.

Phew! On the surface this may seem impressive — or rather too neat, depending on your point of view. Sceptics who have made a study of the work of psychics say much of it can be explained easily.

Jon Donnis runs a website called www.badpsychics.co.uk and has followed Ogilvie’s work. He has looked at three readings Ogilvie gave to people regarding their children, and he is unimpressed. “He uses an old technique called ‘cold reading’, in which he comes out with statements that are vague enough to fit almost everyone, but specific enough to convince someone of his apparent psychic ability,” says Donnis.

“The worst thing about Derek’s act is that he is entering people’s homes and telling them how their child is thinking, whereas all he is actually doing is watching the child, looking at the surroundings and making educated guesses.”

In real life, Ogilvie is a small man full of nervous energy. Meeting him in the foyer of a Glasgow hotel, he confesses to be anxious about the reaction to his show. But he is ready for the sceptics.

“They say it is just cold reading,” he says. “But how did I know she had been raped at the age of 14? I didn’t say something vague like she had been abused as a teenager. I said 14. I wasn’t even looking at her face. And although the sceptics will say what a load of rubbish, how come I change people’s lives?” In another Five documentary currently under production, Ogilvie will undergo rigorous scientific testing at the University of Arizona with Gary Schwartz, an academic expert in psychic phenomena. He also aims to take up the challenge offered by leading US sceptic James Randi, who has offered $1,000,000 to anyone who can prove their psychic abilities under scientific conditions.

“A lot of the sceptics just don’t get it,” says Ogilvie. “They don’t understand that I’m putting myself on the line scientifically. If I am a fraud they will totally debunk me.”

What does he say to those who would accuse him of being a smart Glasgow entrepreneur who, after the failure of his last venture, has simply landed himself in another lucrative line of work.

Ogilvie takes umbrage at this, claiming to have had his first psychic experience at the age of nine when he saw the spirit of a dead neighbour in the corner of his bedroom. As a child, he says, he put his knowledge of his psychic abilities “in a box in my mind and threw away the key”. Only when his business empire collapsed did he, conveniently, realise the extent of his hidden psychic powers.

“I’ve been a millionaire,” he says. “I’ve had the Rolls Royce and the Aston Martin and the house in Kirklee Road that’s now worth a million quid. I’ve done it and I don’t want to go there again. The most important thing for me is credibility.”

I ask him, now that we have been talking for a while, with him telling me about the uncanny accuracy of his psychic abilities, what he can divine from me. He immediately looks past me to an empty space next to my chair.

“There’s a lady standing over there,” he says, suddenly serious. “I don’t know if she’s associated with you. I’m going to ask you a few things, and then we’ll know.”

He asks if there is something wrong with my home’s front door, or the front step. Nope.

What about my mother’s front door? Nope.

“That’s fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine,” he says.

“Is it you or your mum who just got new curtains or blinds in the front room or living room of the house?” Nope, neither of us, I’m afraid.

“And you can’t validate the house number . . . 23?” Nope.

“Right, this lady here could be associated with anyone here. Back in a minute . . .” He scurries off to question some nearby hotel staff, without success. When he returns he is crestfallen and apologises.

What does he say to those who simply won’t believe in him? “I say, give me another six months to a year and you will believe. Because I’ll have worked with scientists, I’ll have had all the brain scans, I’ll have done the Randi challenge.

“I’ll have put myself totally on the line. Because I’m no faker, I’m no liar. I’m the real deal.”

The Baby Mind Reader will be broadcast on Five on June 19