As a new edition of Ireland's best-known book of predictions hits the shelves, the inheritor of the 'Old Moore' mantle talks to Róisín Ingle
Old Moore is not that old. He looks nothing like the creepy figure with a walking stick portrayed in Old Moore's Almanac, the venerable publishing institution whose 2005 edition was launched this week. The current incarnation of Old Moore, the oracle responsible for predictions on everything from politics to property prices in the Almanac, is in fact an astrologer and tarot card consultant called Julian de Burgh. (No relation to Chris, by the way).
Old-ish Moore (de Burgh is a 49-year-old father of three) has been criticised this week by non-believers questioning his predictions for 2005. Such scepticism is not surprising given that most of us probably reckon we could make a decent stab at some of his more general predictions.
January's forecast, for example, that financial institutions will "find other ways to fool customers", is surely something of a given these days, while September's prediction that "property prices will continue to rise", sounds more like common sense than prophecy. In May, it's a pretty sure bet that "in the north of Ireland, current talks fail to please Unionists". And predicting that a major anti-drink-driving campaign will be mounted by gardaí in December is rather like surmising that it will rain quite a lot in Ireland next year.
"People don't take it deadly seriously," de Burgh concedes, when asked about the response from loyal Almanac readers to the predictions. "The one-to-one consultations I do are very different, they can be great fun and terribly serious at the same time."
De Burgh, who trained as an engineer, says he has been foreseeing events since he was a teenager, and was an ideal candidate for the job when the Almanac's publishers approached him seven years ago.
"Once, when I was 16, I had my girlfriend on the back of my motorbike and I got this flash of a very bad accident, so I had to stop for a minute because of this horrible feeling," he says. "Then as we went on we came across the scene of a terrible accident just as I had described it to my girlfriend. I have always got unexplainable feelings like that."
Before he took the job of Old Moore, de Burgh had been long fascinated by the pamphlet. With its information on markets, horse racing fixtures, tides, sunrises, eclipses, household hints and vital gestation and mating tables for livestock, the publication is something of a Bible for farmers. He remembers going into Eason's to buy the Almanac when he was 19 after reading an article about the predictions, and he has been a fan ever since.
The original Old Moore was an astrologer and mathematician called Theophilis Moore from Milltown in Dublin who became known as "the Irish Merlin". He is not to be confused with Sir Francis Moore, a royal physician who set up the original Moore's Almanac in Britain almost 70 years earlier. The most primitive form of the almanac - an Arabic word meaning "a calendar of skies" - was Scandinavian and made from notches carved into wood to mark important dates and information. The first printed almanac was produced by Gutenberg in the 15th century.
Understandably, de Burgh finds it hard to articulate exactly how he comes up with the predictions. He says he sits in front of the computer and "will be drawn to Mexico or somewhere. Then I look for more details on some other level that I don't understand. The intuitive level, I suppose". People may scoff, but de Burgh claims a client base ranging from current Dáil members to top Swiss bankers, who approach him for both personal and business advice.
De Burgh says it is difficult to be as specific as he might like in his predictions due to space constraints. But his more specific soothsayings this year include the claims that the Government will begin to fall apart in March, with an election coming next summer.
"In this business you are a sitting duck to be ridiculed, but I have a thick neck and believe in what I do," he says. And if an election is called next year, he can always phone up all those non-believers and tell them that he told them so.
Old Moore's Almanac (€3.50) will be available in newsagents from October
Seeing the future: Old Moore's predict ions for 2005
Disagreements within the Government lead to a summer election
Tony Blair comes under pressure from his own party members to resign in April
A prominent horse-racing figure is accused of not declaring funds held in an off-shore bank
A famous movie star dies on set in July
A natural disaster hits Japan in November
Farmers in the west of Ireland are encouraged in February to set aside some land for wind farming as a means of supplementing their income