GORDON Smith has spent his career communicating with dead people, passing messages on to living relatives and in the process has become one of the world's most successful mediums.

But now Glasgow-born Gordon, who tours the theatres of Europe with his stage shows, is communicating with his audience via a very different medium.

The 52-year-old has written his autobiography, in which he talks about his own life growing up in Balornock and Easterhouse.

And the book is a revelation.

Gordon describes his family in great detail, how his mother and father fought against colour prejudice in Glasgow to be together; the colours being green and Orange in that his parents came from opposite sides of the religious divide.

He also describes in great detail the awesome figure that was his mother, Lizzie, who fought poverty, Glasgow's street gangs and vandals to keep her family safe.

Gordon also reveals the abuse he suffered as a very young boy and he goes on to detail how he came to realise he had psychic powers. First of all though, he talks about his mother, a woman who would swear better than any trooper, a little woman who was as handy with her fists as any amateur boxer.

He reveals the tale of one day, as a little boy he was being led by the hand along his garden path in Mansel Street when Lizzie Smith realised the door to their flat was ajar.

"My mother knew there was someone in our flat that day," he writes. "Now, many people would have run or called out for help but my mother wasn't like other people.

"The intense silence that had built up was broken by a deafening roar. The hunt was over and the loud yell was from my mother. She had caught a man hiding under one of our beds. (I would later learn that he had broken into our house to steal clothes from my eldest brother Tommy's wardrobe.)

"From a child's point of view, all I could see now was one body standing, bent over another which was crawling and clambering around on the floor of our hall, being punched kicked and battered like an old cod. The young man rolled out of our front door doubled over."

Gordon maintains his family were his gang, and despite living in an 'ultra-violent' world he felt safe.

But there were times when the gang couldn't protect him.

"I must have been six when an older boy, in his late teens perhaps, from a few doors down lifted me over the garden fence. There was a motorbike covered with a tarpaulin next to the back wall of the house and he took me underneath it.

"I had a sensation like fainting in the midst of something bad happening."

There was more than one predator in the area.

"Around this time I was abused by an older man in our street, a relative of a neighbouring family who would visit them often."

Gordon, who went on to become a barber before embarking upon a career in mediumship, reveals how, somehow, he managed to block out the abuse.

But he was not able to block out the intrusions into his mind from the spirit world. As a child, Gordon began to hear 'garbled voices in the darkness.'

Then one day while playing near his house, he was greeted by a family friend called Ummy, who was originally from Poland.

After chatting to the man, Gordon ran inside to tell his mother the tale, and reciting a line from Ummy's conversation.

"He was singing that song, Mammy 'We will be buried in Dalbeth!' My mother called out 'Stop that!' and looked scared in a way I had never seen before. 'Get out of here and stop telling lies!' my mother yelled and her open hand smacked me around the top of the legs.

"I felt dejected and scared."

It transpired Ummy had died in an accident two days earlier and been buried in Dalbeth Cemetery in the east end of Glasgow.

Gordon's story is packed with such incidents and it's dark yet often funny.

"It's a book I've wanted to write for some time," he says, smiling. "I'm glad to have had the chance."

n Gordon Smith: Best of Both Worlds, Coronet Books, £16.99.