SPINNING AFTER PATRIC'S STAR

Rupert Murdoch (Pisces) loves a good horoscope; John Major (Aries) has had his chart done; and as for Diana (Cancer)... Astrology has never been so popular, or such big business. But when the late, great Patric Walker (Libra) died, it wasn't just his billion readers - or his income - that attracted his aspirant successors; it was his reputation as the Henry James of horoscope writers, as the man who'd made the trade respectable. The King was dead; who was to inherit his throne? Step forward Shelley von ... SPINNING AFTER PATRIC'S STARion readers - or his income - that attracted his aspirant successors; it was his reputation as the Henry James of horoscope writers, as the man who'd made the trade respectable. The King was dead; who was to inherit his throne? Step forward Shelley von ...

IN THESE anxiously superstitious days, when horoscopes are cast for princesses and prime ministers, it's somehow fitting that one of the world's most famous astrologers is to be found in a palatial apartment half-way between Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. I am here to meet Shelley von Strunckel, on the morning after her greatest triumph in an already glittering career: the morning after she has been appointed to fill the gap left by Patric Walker's death, as eminent astrologer to the Evening Standard. Ms von Strunckel inhabits the first floor of an imposing mansion block (Michael Portillo lives next door, Roy Hattersley downstairs); she meets me at the front door, and ushers me into an opulent living-room that overlooks Westminster Cathedral. We sit on a vast sofa made of softest suede, surrounded by vases filled with out-of-season lilies and irises. On the walls hang gold-embossed paintings from a castle in Prague; on the side tables there are antique Eastern artefacts and ranks of wax church candles.

Ms von Strunckel, a Californian married to an English barrister, is immaculately coiffed, dressed, and made-up, rather in the manner of an attractive dowager featured in the society pages of a glossy magazine. It is early in the morning, but there is no sign that von Strunckel was up late the night before, celebrating her new job with dinner at London's most fashionable restaurant, the Ivy. She had forgotten to book a table, she tells me, so her secretary rang the Ivy at the last minute and told the manager that Ms von Strunckel would like to eat there that evening. And lo, a table was found: not simply any table, mind you, but the most important table in the restaurant - the one that lesser personages must book six weeks in advance. "I had no idea that I would be deemed so important," she remarks quietly, with a small look of lady-like satisfaction.

Just beyond the living-room door, in Ms von Strunckel's imposing hallway, a plaster angel gazes down on an elegant bowl piled high with champagne corks: "I like that image," she says. The angel looks a little mournful, disapproving even, but Shelley von Strunckel has a great deal to celebrate. For in the world of astrology, it is unanimously agreed that to inherit Patric Walker's job is to achieve the apogee of popular astrological fame. His readers - one billion of them, according to estimates - held his horoscopes to be uncannily accurate; though his real talent may have been to write in such a generalised, unfailingly solicitous manner that he could mean anything to anybody. (Take, for example, his predictions for Libra - his own star sign - for 7 October, the day before he died: "It seems you have put up with a great deal over the past weeks in the hope that a trying domestic situation would eventually prove worthwhile. Now you know this will never be. It is better to abandon hope and make the necessary adjustments than to struggle on.")

There is also the money to consider: Walker was said to earn at least pounds 500,000 a year - possibly more - from his syndicated columns in the Evening Standard, the Mail on Sunday, Harpers & Queen, and dozens of other newspapers and magazines across the world. His salary was supplemented by the hefty profits from his astrological phone-lines, which were rung by thousands, at a cost of 49 pence a minute. A share of these profits also went to the newspapers themselves: which meant that his worth to those who employed him, in particular Associated Newspapers (the owners of the Standard and the Mail on Sunday), was incalculable. (The Mail on Sunday, for example, added over 250,000 copies to its circulation of two million when it published one of his biannual astrology supplements).

Little wonder, then, that during his life and after his death there was a quiet scuffle among lesser-known astrologers as to who would be named his successor. Unfortunately, as von Strunckel herself admits, "Patric told quite a few people that they were going to be his heir." He had, over the years, bestowed his avuncular patronage on a favoured few: among others, Peter Watson, a former commissioning editor at the Mail on Sunday, who left his job to become assistant to the great man; the Telegraph's astrologer, Robert Hyde; Jonathan Cainer, astrologer to the Daily Mail; Miles Chapman, deputy editor of the Evening Standard magazine; Nick Campion, former Daily Mail astrologer and president of the Astrological Association; and Shelley von Strunckel herself, the Sunday Times' astrologer. Walker provided them all with advice, encouragement, and from time to time, promises of a glittering future as his chosen heir.

Alas, at the time of his death, there was still no clear indication as to which of them was his true favourite. "Patric thought a sorcerer ought to have an apprentice," says Miles Chapman, dryly. "But he just kept changing his mind about who it should be. Perhaps he didn't really want a replacement, after all - apres moi, le deluge." Von Strunckel, however, had the advantage of having already written the Evening Standard column for several months, when Walker was taken ill four years ago. Thus it came to pass that on 6 November 1995, after lengthy deliberations at Assoc-iated Newspapers, she ascended to his throne. The King is dead, long live the Queen.

YOU MIGHT WELL dismiss astrology as a load of old twaddle, but many people believe otherwise. Since its principles were established in Babylonia 4,000 years ago - a potent blend of divination, magic, religion, astronomy and mathematics - the movements of the stars and the planets have been said to influence human nature, and to provide an indication of what may befall us in the future. Hitler (a Taurus) consulted an astrologer, and so did Indira Gandhi (Scorpio) and Nancy Reagan (Cancer) on behalf of her husband, Ronald (Aquarius). Princess Diana (Cancer) turned to astrology for guidance, as did the Duchess of York (Libra) and others in the Royal Family. (Russell Grant, the Daily Mirror's roly-poly star-gazer, cast a horoscope for the Queen Mother - a Leo - in 1978, and has seen a number of her relatives since.) John Major (Aries) had his chart drawn up by his biographer, Nesta Wyn-Ellis, who also happens to be an astrologer; it has subsequently been noted by other astrologers that Major chose "a suspiciously auspicious date" to resign as leader of the Conservative Party and seek re-election. Lord Rothermere (Virgo), the owner of Associated Newspapers, is alleged to have asked Walker for astrological advice on at least one occasion; and his wife, Lady Rothermere (Taurus), consulted Walker regularly until her death in 1992. Rupert Murdoch, a Piscean, has always been keen on the stars, and may well have found comfort in what Justin Toper of the Sun had to say, the week Murdoch closed Today: "Never mind," he wrote, "do away with self-doubt and raise your sights a lot higher."

But you can never really be certain as to who believes and who does not. There is much talk at the moment of a new trend among bankers and brokers to employ astrologers who use zippy computer software programmes in order to make predictions about the markets; but no one in the City is naming any names, and neither are their astrologers, who cite a doctorly code of confidentiality. Astrology may have been absorbed into mainstream popular culture - to the extent that so august a body as the Abbey National has just produced a booklet for its customers called "Your Astrological Guide to a Secure Future" - but even in the New Age 1990s, there is still a sense of embarrassment attached to consulting an astrologer on a personal basis. Whereas one might openly read Shelley von Strunckel in a newspaper - and tell one's friends about her predictions, in a spirit of camp irony mingled with true hopefulness - it's quite another thing to reveal that you have gone all the way with Shelley, and that you take her entirely seriously. Thus her list of private clients, which is said to include politicians, celebrities and businessmen, remains confidential: "We've got to the point where broadsheet newspapers are willing to have an astrologer on their pages," von Strunckel says, "but we haven't yet got to the point where eminent people will admit to using an astrologer."

Ms von Strunckel hopes that her profession will soon be taken more seriously by sceptics; and that those who take it seriously in private will start doing so in public. "I just want it to be judged fairly," she says. "Patric's passing was the end of an era, and now we are in a new era. Yes, I have inherited the Evening Standard - which is the passing of the mantle - but I have also inherited the burden, which is to take astrology further."

It is easy to see why her fans choose to trust von Strunckel. Marriages may fail, jobs disappear, houses be repossessed: but Shelley provides a positive look into the future (a typical Shelleyism, for example, is "Conversations that appear to be going nowhere could prove to be very interesting"). She is, moreover, exceedingly good at making her listener feel like the centre of attention - the centre of the universe, in fact - as she gazes at you with her big, unwavering hazel eyes, while explaining how the planets move around you in a stately, celestial cycle. In doing this, she is reassuring and discreet - rather like an expensive Harley Street psychiatrist; and she cleverly implies that the people who turn to astrology do so because they are intelligent, thoughtful, and full of insight. She assumes, grandly, that all right-thinking people are on the same side - the side of astrology - and is prone to such sweeping statements as this: "We are at a point in our culture where we are returning to an understanding of our symbolic universe, as well as a literal universe of cause and effect. And we are beginning to remember - and I say remember, because we understood this until the scientific revolution - we are beginning to remember the interconnectedness of nature."

Von Strunckel also seems to suggest, in a fashionably green way, that by ignoring astrology in the past, we lost touch with the rhythms and patterns of the natural world. "This is what has led to the current ecological crisis," she says. "We think we can do anything with science - but we can't, we have to honour nature. In a way, astrology is the most natural thing in the world. All it does is notice what exists. Early astrologers noticed the relationship between events and planetary patterns. So it is actually rooted in reality. It's terribly simple, and very sensible."

She is, therefore, somewhat disapproving of Mystic Meg, the News of the World astrologer who dresses up in extraordinary outfits - Gypsy Rose meets Cleopatra on the Starship Enterprise - and gazes into a crystal ball while making bizarre predictions on BBC1's National Lottery Live ("Twins wearing peach will be lucky... and a prize for a Scorpio connected with the letter J"). "Mystic Meg is pure entertainment," says von Strunckel with a laugh that is somewhere between a snort and a tinkle. "She's Las Vegas through and through."

LIKE VON STRUNCKEL, most astrologers are rather sneery about Mystic Meg. And you can see why they would find her so irritating: here they are, almost on the verge of respectability with their computers and charts and retainers from City institutions; and Meg is still messing around with a fake crystal ball. "Mystic Meg represents the last of the old-style mumbo jumbo, end of the pier performers," says Jonathan Cainer, the Daily Mail's astrologer who modelled his style on Patric Walker's; one senses that he, and others like him, wish she would go away.

It is to counteract the image of astrology as risible entertainment that a small, select "fellowship" of media astrologers will be launched at the beginning of next year, comprising Cainer, Nick Campion (a Cambridge graduate, with an MA in history), Shelley von Strunckel, and, somewhat surprisingly, Russell Grant. I say surprisingly, for if Patric Walker was the astrologer's astrologer - cultured, refined, and with a literary style likened to that of Henry James by the New York Times - and Shelley von Strunckel is the astrologer as sensible big sister, then Russell Grant is the tabloid astrologer, the chirpy voice of the common man. Cheery, saucy, occasionally lavatorial, his column for the Daily Mirror is syndicated to numerous local newspapers, and he makes regular television appearances, offering five minute horoscopes on many of the daytime shows.

Grant was never one of the true contenders to Patric Walker's crown (too downmarket, although his name was touted), but his popularity is staggering nevertheless. (Granada TV recently logged 400,000 calls to This Morning, from people trying to talk to him on air). He probably earns just as much as Walker did, and is, without doubt, a major player in the astrology marketplace. The formation of the astrologers' fellowship is at his behest: "Our own little Aquarian band," he explains, "to usher in a new astrological age". He is referring to what he describes as a "major" astrological shift that will take place next month - when Uranus moves into Aquarius - and which, he believes, will ensure that we all start taking astrology very seriously indeed.

In search of further enlightenment, I travel to Blackpool, where Russell Grant lives when he is not working in London or New York. We have arranged to meet for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the dirty grey sea. It is winter, and Blackpool is depressingly empty; but Russell makes a grand appearance in his white chauffeur-driven stretch limo. Out he bounds, in jeans and red Dr Marten boots, and a sweatshirt emblazoned with the words Russell Athletic. This I take to be a joke, because Russell is plump: like a great glistening cream puff, with dark curly hair sprouting on top. He sweeps into the restaurant, bestows a winning smile upon the other diners (all two of them), orders a diet coke, and surveys the menu with enthusiasm. "Tuna and salmon with a crab crust. Ooooh, how very Cancerian."

Russell is extremely excited about Uranus moving into Aquarius - not only for the sake for world happiness, but also because "for me as an Aquarius, it is the dawning of a new age." This new age is likely to take him in all sorts of tremendous directions. For instance, he says, a Hollywood agent called him only last week. "She said to me, 'I'm casting for a new soap out here and there's a wonderful part for you.' It's called Malibu Winter, which sounds absolutely divine. She said, 'What are you doing in January?' and I said, 'I'm free! I'm keeping myself free!' "

Russell is full of joie de vivre. He tells me that he was once asked what regrets he had in life, "And I said, 'My God, none!' When you look around and see what's happening in Bosnia and everywhere else - Israel, of course, is the next terrible centre of all that Pluto in Sagittarius - should I have regrets? I have none whatsoever. I'm very lucky - I've got all these exciting things going on. And there are so many exciting things. Last May, for instance, I did Mrs Merton - one of my favourite television programmes - followed, the next week, by Fantasy Football, where I had a ball, followed by a number with PJ and Duncan. We did an old Supremes song, 'You Keep Me Hanging On', and I was Diana Ross. I wore a purple satin jacket and silk trousers. The eclecticness of the Aquarian life last May! I so enjoyed it!"

A former teenage actor, Russell has always known that he wanted to be an entertainer. He was born in Middlesex on 5 February 1951 ("both my moon and sun are in Aquarius") to parents who worked at Pinewood film studios. "My Dad designed the sets, and my Mum worked on the contracts for some of the stars there." His parents split up when he was 18 ("I was on tour at the time, playing the Wicked Wizard in Rumpelstiltskin - one of my favourite roles") and he puts this down to the fact that his mother had not been able to express her artistic talents. "People must retain their individuality," he says, urgently, "because they are unique, aren't they? People are unique. And if someone quashes their individuality, then resentment builds."

Luckily, there has never been any risk of Russell's individuality being quashed. He knew that great things were in store for him from an early age. This was confirmed when he was 12 years old, and his mother took him to Ruislip to see a clairvoyant spiritualist named Nan Cowling. "She said to me, 'I can see you at the Royal Albert Hall - and many years later, I was. I was invited by Radio 2 to sing at Walt Disney's 60th anniversary with an 80-piece orchestra, the BBC orchestra! And there I was, singing Pinocchio! Nan Cowling had said, 'You will be there with little people with animal heads.' And it turned out to be Minnie and Mickey Mouse dancing in front of me! Incredible!"

In between this and earlier stage triumphs, Russell had dabbled in spiritualism ("Psychic News had a headline saying, New Prodigy in Middlesex!") and trained as an astrologer. In 1978, he got his big break, when the Queen Mother visited a stand at the Ideal Home Exhibition, entitled The Stars In Your Life, for a personal astrological consultation with him. After that, the offers came flooding in: TV-AM, Breakfast Time, and also requests for private consultations: "I've seen a lot of politicians," he says. He won't give me their names, except to say that they were all Tories, and that one of them, "a household name" who came to Russell for regular sittings, had the cheek to proclaim on television that astrology was a load of rubbish. "I thought, you old hypocrite, you."

I'm desperate, of course, to know about his royal clients, but he's keeping his mouth shut. "All I can say is that since I shot to prominence with the Queen Mum, afterwards I saw 10 or 11 royals. But I certainly didn't see the Queen - and if I had, I would have said, please darling, get your hair changed."

RUSSELL AND SHELLEY profess great admiration for each other (Shelley: "Russell Grant is seriously aware as an astrologer. I have nothing but respect for him." Russell: "Shelley is fabulous, fabulous!") but their differences in style are undeniable. Ms von Strunckel, for example, would never pronounce upon the Queen's hairdo. Instead, she is at pains to emphasise that she has always been a deep-thinker; and tells me the outline of her early life, as if to explain that astrology was a natural progression for a young philosopher like her.

She was born in Hollywood, an only child, "and one who was very interested in thought and ideas". Her father was a vice-president of Lockheed, the aircraft company; her mother a middle-class Californian housewife. "They were not involved in anything of a metaphysical nature," she says, with some regret. For a woman whose career is based on knowing the exact dates of people's birthdays, she is rather vague about her own. She is, she tells me in answer to my question, "Cancer, with Sagittarius rising and an Aquarius moon. The only Cancers who step out into the media have Aquarius moons. Cancers are quite vulnerable, as you probably know, and sensitive."

Later, however, she admits to growing up in the Fifties. "What was extraordinary about a [Los Angeleno] childhood at that time was that there was around one an environment that was very inquisitive. There were talks one could go to about Eastern and Western thought. As a teenager, one of my favourite places to go was something called the Vedanta Society, which was founded by a modern Indian saint, whose followers included Aldous Huxley. They had lectures in Hollywood which were brilliant - so thought-stimulating." After leaving school (which she found "boring"), von Strunckel found a job as a clothes buyer for a large department store. "I do love clothes," she announces, and she is indeed resplendent in a plum-coloured jacket and a shapely black skirt. But she also felt that an intellectual challenge was lacking in her life - a gap she filled with evening classes in astrology. When she was 29, she finally decided to give up her day job. "What happened was that two people very close to me died on the same day, and I realised that I was actually very unhappy. It then occurred to me that I could work as an astrologer. I knew it was somewhat mad - but I also knew that if I reached 65, and hadn't tried it, I would always regret it."

From the start, she provided her clients - who included lawyers and company executives - with astrologically-based legal and financial advice, as well as more conventional emotional predictions. They were clearly impressed, and she was soon asked to do personal consultations in New York and London. "And now I see all these fascinating, amazing people," she says. "Occasionally I'm able to introduce them, so they can do business together." (As she talks, one wonders if astrology has become a New Age freemasonry of the 1990s, where forward-thinking executives network through a mutual astrologer.)

In 1988, von Strunckel attended a Bow Group conference in Oxford - "I'm very interested in political and economic astrology," she says airily, without going into further details (it seems unlikely that the Bow Group has regular discussions about the stars, but I could be wrong). Anyway, it was at this conference that Shelley met her husband, a barrister named Nigel Gerald ("a Capricorn," she adds, by way of explanation). After their marriage, she started commuting between London and New York, and in 1991 she was asked to write her first column, for a glossy American magazine called Mirabella. "And what happened next," she says, "was a series of events which were destiny. Mirabella was published by Rupert Murdoch, who also published Patric Walker's column in the States - and someone called from Murdoch's office saying would I be interested in meeting Patric? 'Of course!' I said, and a meeting was arranged here in London for August 1991, just before Mercury went retrograde. And until my foot hit the pavement outside the hotel where he was staying, I didn't realise there was something in it for me. The meeting was electric - we both recognised that. In a past life, this was someone that I had known before. We talked for hours - but it was also as if we didn't have to say anything. Then he walked over to the phone and called the Standard and said, 'I've found her!' "

Thus spake the Magus.

The following summer, von Strunckel was appointed astrologer to the Sunday Times (the first quality newspaper to make the leap into the stars), in part because of her illustrious association with Patric Walker. At this point, perhaps predictably, Walker became a little bit huffy with his new protegee. I happened to interview him at the time - a dapper 61-year- old, who looked like a slightly rakish country gent in town for the day - and Shelley appeared to have fallen from favour; Walker was talking about finding another heir, though, equally predictably, he had not yet made up his mind as to who it should be.

Shelley, however, remains gracious about her previous mentor. "Patric broke the ground that made it possible for me to move to the Sunday Times. The elegance of his writing had begun to reform the image of the subject. It allowed people to say, maybe this is OK. And I think, sadly, that Patric's death has done even more for astrology - because of the degree to which he was eulogised. After he died, people acknowledged the importance of what he said to them."

Like Russell Grant, Shelley believes that we are approaching the dawning of an astrological new age: "Our environment has gone from being incredibly materialistically orientated, to one which is craving a philosophical anchor." And when - naturally - Uranus moves into Aquarius, we will all start having "a new, increasing craving for the big picture". For those who scoff at such sentiments, please remember that this is the woman who at the beginning of 1995 predicted in the Sunday Times that "Burma is likely to change, with an unexpected detente between the military and the political detainee Aung San Suu Kyi (Gemini)." She pointed this out to me, and yes, I was impressed. Less conclusive was her prediction of "a new vigour" for everyone in 1995, and "an optimism not seen since the 1960s". There hasn't been much evidence of vigorous optimism so far this year, but you never know, things might get better by Christmas. As for 1996 in general: well, you've guessed it - we're promised a better, brighter world, again.

IN THE COURSE of writing this piece, I discovered that friends and colleagues divided into two distinct camps. There are those who sidle over and admit that they are quite bereft after Patric Walker's death, and there are the others, who are thrown into a frenzy of irritation at the mere mention of astrology and refuse to accept that the great, the good, and the sensible could ever take it seriously. I veer towards the sceptics' side, and therefore phone a dozen well-regarded astrologers, demanding to know the names of their clients. The response is discouraging. Robert Currie, a charming old Etonian and former City commodity broker who now runs an astrological consultancy firm called Equinox, says that he has done charts for "a Conservative MP, a well-known Socialist MP, and a current world leader". He won't reveal their identities, of course. Neither will Roy Gillett, a former schoolmaster and current chairman of the Astrological Association, who now specialises in using a computer software programme called Astroanalyst to draw up reports for "large institutions in the City".

Christine Skinner, a leading light of the Astrological Assoc-iation, is only slightly more specific: "One of my clients does a lot of trade with Germany," she says, so she makes predictions on the future movements of the Deutschmark on the foreign exchange. As for Nesta Wyn-Ellis, she says that she still sends John Major little notes containing astrological advice, and likes to think that he takes them seriously.

But it's hardly conclusive, is it? Ask too many questions, and the whole business looks as flakily vague as Mystic Meg's lottery predictions. And then I remember the end of my meeting with Shelley von Strunckel - the slightly embarrassing bit that I wasn't going to write about.

I am sitting in her living-room, with the view of Westminster Cathedral outside, and the plaster angel inside, and she's looking up my stars in her big black book. The room is silent, and I think of all the other clients who have perched beside her on this pale suede sofa (Princesses? Prime Ministers? Heaven - and Shelley - only knows).

Then she turns to me and tells me - confidently, comfortingly - that I, like many others, am living in a period of great uncertainty. And I think, "Yes, Shelley, how right you are."

"There is going to be a progression of changes in your career this year," she goes on, and I think, "Yes, she's right again!" But by 1997, she says, "You will have the authoritative certainty that will allow you to know what the next step is."

This sounds pretty good to me, although not, perhaps, quite specific enough. Still, according to Shelley, my astrological prospects are better - indeed, brighter - than ever before. And how could anyone argue with that? 8