If you want a new job or a new partner, order it from the cosmos, Barbel Mohr tells Róisín Ingle. But how could it possibly work?

It's all Noel Edmonds's fault. Ever since the bearded one, former Swap Shop presenter, now ringmaster of top-rating game show Deal or No Deal, let slip that he employed Barbel Mohr's book The Cosmic Ordering Service to claw his way back to television glory there has been a veritable ordering frenzy in certain circles.

The book which claims you can simply order what you need from the cosmos - the universal energy Mohr believes surrounds us - and it will deliver, sold more than a million copies in Germany without any help from Edmonds, but he certainly delivered her to the top of the best-sellers in the UK. Now a companion, The Wish Book, been published and Mohr has come to London from her home in rural Germany to explain what cosmic ordering is all about.

She has a lot of explaining to do. When you tell people about The Cosmic Ordering Service you get two reactions: first, people roll their eyes, mutter something about new-age quacks exploiting the vulnerable or secondly, their eyes shine with hope, already visualising themselves with that perfect new man or that suitcase full of money of whatever else it is that they'd like to order from the cosmos.

It's a divisive notion, this idea that whatever you need will be provided on request, although let's be honest it's not exactly new. Ask and it shall be given unto you, says the Bible. Seek, and ye shall find.

I'm expecting a cosmic diva - someone wearing bright colours, possibly clashing, who has a few crystals secreted about her person. As it turns out Barbel Mohr looks like a librarian: long legs encased in jeans, mousy brown hair, parted at the centre and bookish glasses. Instead of the new-age speak her arguments are measured and backed up by her own interpretation of modern quantum physics no less, all delivered in a sombre, heavily accented voice that demands to be taken seriously.

It might interest the "roll your eyes" brigade to know that the first time Mohr placed an order with the cosmos she did it in a cynical attempt to prove a friend wrong.

"I was looking for a new boyfriend at the time," says Mohr who grew up near Frankfurt before moving to Munich to study business, later working as a photographer and graphic artist. "My friend, who was quite spiritual, suggested asking the universe, or the cosmos, for the man. So I did it as a joke. I thought it was the most ridiculous thing I had ever heard. I went out on the balcony and sent this order out for a man with blue eyes. I stipulated that he must be a non-smoker, non drinker, vegetarian who practised Tai Chi."

Mohr even specified the week during which this man must enter life. "I did that just to show even what nonsense it was. I coined the phrase cosmic ordering for a joke," she says.

At the time Mohr had no time for spiritual matters.

"I didn't believe in anything. I would get angry with these spiritual people. I thought those who prayed or asked God or anyone for help were just too lazy to do things for themselves," she says. "It didn't interest me at all."

She forgot about her order until she went to a party and got talking to a non-smoking, non-drinking, vegetarian man with blue eyes and a love of Tai Chi. "I couldn't believe it. He showed up the week I specified in my diary, and that night I had a new boyfriend," she says.

That's where the cosmic ball started rolling for Mohr. She ordered a castle to live in but it was too cold so she ordered a cheap apartment in the centre of Munich - "cheaper than I even thought existed," she says - and it was delivered unto her.

She ordered a new job, working in the countryside with an easy-going boss. Verily it arrived. "I started to think more seriously about why these things were happening. I didn't believe it was coincidence," she says.

Mohr went on television in Germany to ask people to send her examples of what they thought were "coincidences". She explained her reasons and was soon getting so many inquiries about cosmic ordering - "people were asking me where they could get the number for the service," she laughs - that she sat down and wrote a simple "how to" guide.

"Soon I was going to the Xerox place all the time to make photocopies for people and then I found a publisher," she says. "The publisher said we might sell 5,000 copies."

Incredibly, she says, that while she did order her husband and her non-identical twins - a boy and girl now five years old - she didn't order a bestseller.

"I don't think it's good to order something like that. I made an order that everyone who reads the book might somehow be reached by the energy I want to share. I didn't order success. That might mean people would buy the book, don't like it and leave it on a shelf. That's environmental waste. I don't want to do that," she says.

Mohr believes the cosmos is all of us, that we are all just swimming in a kind of "oneness soup" and she isn't averse to using science to back up her theory.

"Modern quantum physicists tell us that on a sub-atomic level everything is one," she says.

Self love, apparently, is the key to cosmic ordering.

"Modern brain scientists tell you that if you have mainly positive emotions and if you are a person appreciating yourself you are healthier, your immune system is more balanced and your intuition works better," she says. "Everyone is responsible for themselves. If you expect happy things to appear in your life you increase the probability that they will happen, if you expect the worst that's what you'll get," she says.

What about people who just think her philosophy is nonsense and that she is giving people false hope? "I don't mind if people think I'm talking rubbish but I find it interesting how very few people who disagree do so calmly. They tend to get angry.

"I used to be like that and I know from my own experience that the anger was based in fear of the unknown. I can only say how I've been happy and fulfilled since I started ordering and I wish happiness and fulfilment for others too. We can create our own reality, if we were all ordering from the cosmos the world would be a much better place."

Still not convinced? Here's one last quote which explains the notion of cosmos.

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us . . . our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

No, not Barbel Mohr. That gem came from Einstein. Happy ordering.

The Cosmic Ordering Service by Barbel Mohr and The Wish Book by Barbel Mohr and Pierre Franckh are published by Hodder and Hay House