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Are you a woman who believes in astrology?

This article is more than 19 years old
Then let me back you into a corner - and beat some sense into you

A friend and I have parted company. The separation papers cite "irreconcilable differences". For years I have endured with equanimity her inability to distinguish between the phrases "I'll meet you at seven" and "Do feel free to turn up at whatever time you have finished the duties you feel take priority over the fact that I am sitting alone in a pub being propositioned by every lump of lard with a half of bitter and vestigial sexual urges." I barely flinched when she borrowed my flat for a party and left it looking like the last days of Sodom had been re-enacted with extra verve in a hitherto unspoiled corner of south-eastern suburbia.

But on New Year's Eve she went too far. As the fireworks exploded and the clock struck midnight (that's such a lie - I mean, as we all stood round someone's mobile phone waiting to give a desultory hurrah when the digits changed), I happened to mention the jaw-dropping news that in 2004 Russell Grant had received more hits on Google than David Beckham. I intimated that this was the signal to indulge in a moment of unmitigated despair for the future of humanity. Instead of instantly demonstrating agreement with my thesis by fashioning a Shelley Von Strunkel doll out of the nearest cushion and setting it on fire, she replied, "Well, you know - there is something in it."

"What?" I asked.

"Well, you know, just something."

"You have opposable thumbs and a limbic system, don't you?"

"Yes"

"Even A-levels?"

"Yes."

"Then why are you standing before me arguing that what the planets were doing when you made your inauspicious debut has a scintilla of an effect on anything in your life, except for weather fronts and night following day?"

"I'm a typical Pisces and my mum's a typical Leo."

"You're a fatuous insult to the species. You should be stripped and burned at the stake of commonsense. I will stoke the fires with Jonathan Cainer horoscopes ripped untimely from the Daily Mail, and as the flames lick ever higher, I will suck the smell of grilled moron greedily down into my lungs."

"What star sign are you?"

"I'm whatever sign whose prediction this week read, 'On Sunday, a friend who has masqueraded as a rational human being for the 15 years of your acquaintance will stand revealed before you as just another cack-brained, gibbering fool swirling in a festering cesspit of stupidity'."

From there it was but a short trip to a heated debate about Carole Caplin and Cherie Blair, alternative medicine, electronic voice phenomena and, finally and most hysterically, Carol Vorderman's detox diet. We may have strayed from the brief somewhat with the last, but tempers by then were more than frayed.

I think I would have borne her imbecility better if I hadn't recently, by virtue of a misguided but well-intentioned birthday present (a voucher for a "holistic spa day"), found myself in closer proximity than I would have ever voluntarily assumed to serried ranks of pastel-uniformed practitioners of the various modern arts that require mud to be infused with seaweed extracts, waved over a moonlit pool as Neptune is in the ascendant and spread across your body like some kind of sedimentary roustabout. I had always assumed that everyone involved would, implicitly or explicitly, acknowledge that the whole zodiac/crystal/slop-smearing industry was itself a stupendous bucketful of brown shite, infused with extracts of mendacity and exploitation and waved over a shadowy pool of gullibility left over from ye olden times.

But after my umpteenth conversation with a plastic-aproned, dead-eyed (Sagittarian) smearer, I was forced to conclude that they all believe in the muck - in all senses of the word - they spread.

Now that the season of goodwill has passed, let's make a plea for greater intolerance (carefully directed) in the world. The next time a woman (and it is always a woman - men have many flaws but at least they prefer to seek the answers to their problems in Top Gear and Abi Titmuss rather than the waxings and wanings of the moon) asks you what star sign you are, swears by essential oils, magnet therapy or talks about realigning anything but shelves, make a stand. Back her into a corner and talk at her about Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, Crick and Watson and Jeremy Paxman until she admits the error of her ways. For astrology and the rest to flourish it is only necessary that those with an IQ in double figures do nothing.

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