Uncanny, the high-energy supernatural drama, returns tonight (January 31) with more chills, turns, and moments that might make even the most ardent Sceptics sleep sound asleep.
A family in Bury, Lancashire, claims that the restless spirits of an eerie child have persuaded them to go to a remote farmhouse in the first episode of the second season of the spine-tingling BBC Two show. It’s unknown whether Team Skeptic or Team Psychic will prevail in this round.
As longtime Uncanny fans will no doubt know, the show simply wouldn’t be the same without host Danny Robins, who brings plenty of humour, curiosity, and quotable moments to the spooky proceedings.
But who is Danny, and how did the comedy writer’s career take him down such a hair-raising path? Here, the Mirror takes a look…
Fascination with ghosts
Danny’s fascination with paranormal things dates back to when he was a child in Newcastle and spent many hours visiting his Catholic grandparents’ home. In a 2022 interview with The Evening Standard, Danny shared: “It came from living in a belief-free household.
My mother had a Catholic upbringing and had vehemently rejected religion. I was really fascinated by seeing scary popes on books and Jesus staring down with his holy heart and looking very sinister at my grandparents.
Panic attack terror
Danny’s fascination with the afterlife turned into an “antidote” to combat his crippling fear of death until his student days, though, were when. The then 20-year-old went from being” happy-go-lucky “to” haunted “overnight after suffering a panic attack so severe he ended up hallucinating visions of angels.
When the life-changing incident occurred, Danny had initially assumed he had suffered a fatal heart attack when he returned from college for the Christmas holidays. He had a completely different relationship with death from that point forward.
Speaking with The Guardian in 2023, Danny shared:” I went from being this fairly happy-go-lucky person to somebody who felt like I’d seen outside the curtain. Suddenly, I was aware of death in a way I hadn’t been before, and spent a lot of time scared after that. I felt haunted by that experience. “
Sadly, the experience had a profound effect on Danny’s mental health, leaving him depressed and anxious, and he still deals with dark thoughts to this day. Danny continued:” It was debilitating. I couldn’t socialise, I couldn’t concentrate on my studies. I vividly recall going to a friend’s house because I was overcome by this terrible fear.
“I’ve tried my life since then to keep it locked down and in the box.” I experience a bit of a wobble when I start to think too much about death and it all swells up once more. You wouldn’t have to be a great psychiatrist to enjoy me and ghosts because I swill pints of the drug every day to combat that ominous fear of death.
‘ Last fiver ‘
Although Danny has enjoyed plenty of success in life, for many years, he felt like a “failure” as a struggling “jobbing writer”. He admitted: “I felt like a failure. Every day, I could taste failure in my mouth. We had a very tight budget, and I was entering a phase of my life where I wasn’t the “young hotshot anymore.”
Danny turned to drama after previously writing comedy for Radio 4 and Mock The Week, but this didn’t bring in any money. Indeed, shortly before he launched his first paranormal podcast, The Battersea Poltergeist – which he regarded then as his “last roll of the dice” – Danny was virtually penniless.
He recalled: “I was literally down to my last fiver. I can’t recall having to say, “I’m going to have to pay you later,” when I went on a stag weekend and was unable to afford it. Thankfully, the podcast proved to be a phenomenal success, paving the way for a string of impressive professional accomplishments that catapulted Danny to household-name status.
Living ‘ vicariously ‘ through ghost stories
Danny spends a lot of time with those who have heart-pounding tales to tell, but he hasn’t actually encountered a spook himself. In a 2024 interview with The Times, dad-of-two Danny confessed: “Yep — never seen one! Through the stories I’ve been told, I live.
However, Danny, who lives in a Victorian property in Walthamstow with his wife and children, does believe that everyone is, in some way, haunted by the previous inhabitants of their home.
He explained: “We are all haunted by the house we live in. When you remove the physical layers of the walls, paint, decor, and design, you are haunted by the layers of people who have lived there, whether you are a skeptic or a believer. Our house’s previous owner was a true East End widow. She had been there 30 years, and her husband’s family was there 40 years before that.
We remade everything she had done and replaced it with the aesthetic choices of a different generation when we moved in in 2012. For a long time, we had the feeling we were sleeping in an old lady’s house. Until recently, the kitchen still had all her old-lady stuff: twee old-fashioned tiles with fruit bowls. It felt like being in someone else’s kitchen for ten years. “
Uncanny airs on BBC Two starting at 9 p.m. tonight (January 31).
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Source: Mirror
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