Doom, gloom, wombs and tombs: Old Moore’s 2015

Old Moore, aka Theophilus Moore, is an ancient, apparently deathless soothsayer who has, since 1764, predicted the news headlines in Old Moore's Almanac. This annual publication is filled with articles about pet psychics, holy wells, haunted Irish buildings and agriculture on Mars (frankly, this newspaper could learn a thing or two). Every year Old Moore makes dozens of prediction, and he gets some of them sort of right, proving there is more to life than "facts" and "logic".

Oddly enough, despite his obsession with things that are "in the news", Old Moore did not predict The Irish Times' Old Moore series, which was started off by my colleague Rosita Boland in January, which each month subjected his premonitions to forensic analysis. Nor did he predict that I would take over the column from Rosita in October. If he had, it would have helped me a lot with my forward planning for the year, to be honest. This said, I forgive Old Moore his oversight and am fully confident that he read this article with his "mind powers" some time last year.

Anyway, after a year of analysis, here are some things we can confidently say that Old Moore enjoys:

Vague apocalyptic statements

Each month Old Moore includes a few obscure, hard-to-disprove predictions. In November, for example, he mentioned in passing that at some point there would be something called "the Dark Pope". He's a bit vague on the details. We've been arguing here at The Irish Times about whether it's a reference to Conor Pope.

In July he throws in a reference to a “trinity” of events. “Fukushima is the first. There will be a second in 2015 and a third in 2016.” This sounds pretty ominous but it basically boils down to a prediction that between now and the end of 2016 some things will happen. When some things happen he will be proved right. Spooky.

My favourite example of Old Moore’s vagueness is his unspecific, theoretically positive but oddly threatening November prediction: “There will be lots of very old people as medicine improves.” This terrifying geriatric horde will, no doubt, need a strong leader, presumably with the word “old” already affixed to his moniker.

New-fangled contraptions

Old Moore might be an oldster but he likes to talk about fancy futuristic things. He's quite confident about humans' technological capabilities. This year he has predicted flying cars, lots of robots, mining on the moon, space tourism, space emigration, space hotels and even "a reality show about the moon". A colleague thinks Old Moore's technology-themed visions are "just reruns of The Jetsons", but as my robo- chauffeur said as we floated towards an orbiting space hotel, "that sounds like something the Dark Pope might say".

The health of celebrities

He doesn’t have a great track record predicting celebrity deaths. Betty White, George Bush snr and Zsa Zsa Gabor are all still with us despite Old Moore’s grisly musings. Perhaps he just means that Bush, White and Gabor are dead to him?

Joan Collins could go either way, according to Old Moore. Her life “hangs in the balance”, he says for this month, although she appears to be healthy. Meanwhile her similarly amazing sister Jackie died in September and Old Moore said nothing at all.

Other people whose health Old Moore is worried about include Barbra Streisand, Jay Leno, Lady Gaga, “Joan Rivers’s daughter”, the pope (of the light, not dark, variety) and the Clintons.

His premonitions are a who’s who of hypothetical illness. As far as I can tell, none of these people were sicker than usual in 2015.

The fertility of young women

Here are the people Old Moore erroneously predicted pregnancies for earlier this year: Rosanna Davison, Paris or Nicky Hilton, princesses Eugenie or Beatrice “or both”, Nicole Scherzinger and Anne Hathaway. Jennifer Aniston, he told us confidently in September, “wants a baby”, although how we can prove what Jennifer Aniston wants is unclear, or why she only wants this baby in September and is seemingly indifferent to it at other times of year.

Old Moore also predicted the use of a hypothetical device women “can wear to show they’re ovulating”. Why he would want such a dystopian contraption to exist is strange given that it would put him out of business (at least as far as his creepy womb-gazing goes).

Natural disaster news

Checking up on Old Moore's pronouncements has made me realise how vague the phrase "in the news" is. There is a lot of news nowadays, and I now know that somewhere out there almost anything you can think of is in the news. There's a lot of weather and a lot of tectonic activity, and Old Moore's disaster predictions run from the specific (fires in California; storms in Florida) to the vague (if you predict generic earthquakes and sinkholes and storms, you will be right a lot of the time). In general, though, natural disasters are a good bet for Old Moore.

Health breakthroughs

Thanks to Old Moore and Google I now know that because of the ongoing work of amazing researchers and scientists there are breakthroughs in these fields all the time. So it's not necessarily a sign of Old Moore's precognitive prowess when he predicts them for November. This was the most uplifting thing I learned from my Old Moore experience.

Portmanteau people

Old Moore may be from the 18th century but he knows that Brad and Angelina are correctly titled “Brangelina” (he inaccurately predicted their unholy union would be “in jeopardy” in November) and that proper protocol dictates that Kim Kardashian and Kanye be addressed as “Kimye” (he predicted a baby for Kim and mental-health trouble for Kanye in April). It’s just good etiquette.

On the other hand, when he spuriously declares George and Amal’s “marriage” to be “in jeopardy” in May, he refers to them as “George and Amal” and not “Gamal” or “Amorge.” He also refers to the Clintons as Bill and Hillary, not “Billary.”

ACCURATE MOORE HIS BEST PREDICTIONS FOR 2015

JANUARY

'Gay Byrne in the news' In January Byrne's interview with Stephen Fry about God went viral and racked up 4.5 million views on Youtube. "Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?" cried Stephen. Old Moore had heard it all before.

FEBRUARY

'Very famous artwork in the news' Paul Gauguin's Nafea Faa Ipoipo (or When Will You Marry?) became the most expensive piece of art ever when a museum in Qatar bought it for €265 million. Old Moore probably also knows the answer to the question in the title.

'Politician has a twitter event' Gerry Adams said during an interview that he was fond of trampolining naked with his dog, and Twitter (which was invented by the Dark Pope as a harbinger of end times) went mad about it.

MARCH

'Sacha Baron Cohen in the news' This gets in on a technicality. Cinecitta Sacha Baron Cohen was the name of the winner of the Best Toy Dog group at Crufts which is, as Rosita said, "the canine equivalent of the Oscars".

MAY

'Female irish politician scandal' We're not sure it was scandalous, but Averil Power announced that she would be leaving Fianna Fáil due to its lack of "vision, courage and leadership" and because of its "cynical and cowardly" approach to the marriage referendum. It was a big deal at the time. The real female Irish politician scandal, of course, is an ongoing one about the low numbers of women in the Dáil.

OCTOBER

'Pork contamination makes the news' And it did. The pig products themselves were the contaminant. "Bacon causes cancer" screamed the headlines after the World Health Organisation classified red meat as a cancer-causing substance and processed meat, including bacon, as a "group 1 carcinogen."

NOVEMBER

'[Irish] fishing vessels in the news' An extensive Guardian report published at the start of the month revealed that undocumented migrants were, shamefully, being abused and taken advantage of on Irish fishing vessels.

DECEMBER

'A storm causes the seas to damage property. A river overflows. Flooding around Cork' For all his apocalyptic zeal, Old Moore understated this one. There's flooding not just in Cork but all around the Shannon.

'Isis will attack the US. A coalition of western countries will unite to stamp out Isis' It's still unclear if the San Bernardino mass shooters had any real Isis connections, but a coalition of war-ready western countries has certainly been formed in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. Chillingly, Old Moore got this one right.