Was the crystal ball on target?

Crammed with adverts for lucky pixie pendants, lucky bingo pens, suggested best lottery numbers for certain star signs and adverts for books on how to turn your life around with witchcraft, it also contains a series of predictions for world events during the year ahead.

It is also one of the most entertaining reads to be had for less than half the price of most other magazines.

Every year the Evening Advertiser goes back through the current edition and sees whether the Almanac was right. Barrie Hudson investigates

January

AS 2003 dawned, Saddam Hussein was still firmly in place as leader of Iraq, but it looked as if his time there was limited.

US president George Bush insisted that the dictator was hiding weapons of mass destruction, and posed an ongoing threat to the safety of the west.

Tony Blair agreed, but the rest of the international community was urging caution, and the idea of invasion, although obviously an option being considered by Bush and Blair, was largely anathema elsewhere.

In London, a Central Line tube train carrying 800 people was derailed.

In the entertainment world, rock star Pete Townsend admitted to the press that he had accessed child pornography images on the internet, although he insisted that he merely did so for research purposes. He was later cautioned by the police.

But the almanac, by contrast, suggested that astrological trends indicated a downturn in international tension.

February

The almanac predicted that international attention would be chiefly focused on Serbia and possibly Albania this month, along with mysterious crimes and financial incompetence.

It also suggested that there might be a crisis, possibly involving Saudi Arabia, which would put the future of the US president under threat for a year.

There was, of course, an international crisis the biggest, in fact, since the aftermath of the World Trade Centre Atrocity of 2001 but it was squarely concentrated around Iraq.

Protests were still being made to and by the UN at the possibility of war, but it was becoming increasingly obvious apparent that Britain and the US were rolling toward conflict in Iraq and the likelihood of being able to put the brakes back on decreased with every hour that passed.

More than 60 people were killed in a nightclub fire in Rhode Island, rock producer Phil Spector was charged with shooting a woman to death at his home, and London introduced its congestion charge.

March

Turning to the almanac for March, the crystal balls seem to have been out of order, as there was no mention of British and American forces marching en masse into Iraq, pummelling its army and overthrowing the ruling dictatorship. Nor was there any mention of huge anti-war demonstrations throughout the world, which attracted hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

Indeed, according to the seers, something called a Jupiter-Neptune opposition pointed to a sense of optimism breaking out.

This could be broadly interpreted as true, however, as the coalition was optimistic of destroying the last remnants of pro-Saddam opposition within a very short time indeed.

April

THE almanac assured that the indications for chaos and conflict were less than in previous months, although leaders would find themselves dealing with the effects of conflicts which had begun in previous months.

Whether this is accurate is debatable, as the war was still raging and would continue to do so for some weeks.

And it was readily apparent that dealing with the effects of the conflict would take a lot longer than the rest of the month.

Elsewhere in the world, North Korea announced that it would not abandon its nuclear weapons programme.

May

Trouble concerning fisheries and fish stocks was predicted, and the almanac was fairly accurate, in that representatives of British trawler crews protested to the media about what they saw as unfair treatment over quotas when compared with the quotas allocated to their contemporaries in the rest of Europe.

The almanac failed to predict EU proposals for a President of Europe, however, as it did the howls of indignation from eurosceptics.

Nor was there any suggestion of suicide bombings rocking Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh.

The almanac also predicted that Israel would reach a state of what was described as meltdown. In the event, the country, along with Palestine, remained embroiled in the ongoing tragedy which plays out between those two countries to this day.

The pregnancy of the Countess of Wessex also seemed to slip under its radar.

June

As the month dawned, and civil order in the conquered Iraq continued, there was speculation among peace protesters that other countries in the region would be next on the coalition's list. Syria and Iran were mentioned, and there were still rumours that North Korea might be a target.

But anybody glancing at that month's entry in Old Moore's Almanac would have noted that this month was due to see the US reaching the limit of growth in its imperial power.

Or maybe they would not have been reassured at all.

There were also predictions of terrorist attacks, and there were indeed several such attacks, although they were generally carried out in Iraq by Saddam loyalists rather than being carried out in the potential crisis regions named by the almanac, which included Texas, Central America, West Africa and India.

July

The second half of the year began with Iraq every bit as much in the news as it had been during the first.

Missing former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, were killed in the northern city of Mosul. So anxious was the US to prove that it had indeed captured the two that their facial injuries were cleaned up before official photographs were released.

In Britain, the Iraq war claimed the life of Dr David Kelly, the arms advisor who killed himself after being named in the controversy over whether claims of weapons of mass destruction had been "sexed up".

In the ensuing days, Prime Minister Tony Blair and his (soon to be former) spin doctor Alistair Campbell were heavily criticised over what had happened.

The almanac was bang on target when it highlighted heavy criticism for the British government.

August

For August, the almanac predicted that terrorists would feel as if they could get away with anything.

Many people did indeed wonder if this was the case, particularly with the continued slaughter of coalition forces in Iraq by pro-Saddam Hussein diehards.

There were also fears closer to home, when both New York and London were plunged into darkness and paralysis by mysterious power cuts. In both cases, the authorities insisted the cause was nothing more sinister than simple malfunctions.

The almanac, remarkable, covered all the options by suggesting that the month was likely to see electrical accidents.

September

Another good month for the almanac, as the oil price rises it predicted for September in its 2003 edition came to pass.

The almanac had suggested tension in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, although it had admittedly failed to suggest that the country would be in Western hands before Spring was out.

The almanac also suggested that Zimbabwe was heading for deepening political crisis and possible civil war. Whether this latter prediction had any veracity is debatable, as the troubled African country has been in a state of growing crisis for years.

This crisis merely reached a plateau when Robert Mugabe's programme of land-grabbing got into full swing, and some commentators have suggested that this only got the level of publicity it did because the victims were white.

October

According to the almanac, October was a month of high hopes for a provisional peace agreement between Israel and Palestine over the border dispute which has dogged the two countries for almost four decades.

But with Palestinians launching suicide attacks against Israeli targets and Israel launching retaliatory air strikes, peace was the last thing on most people's minds in the region.

The almanac also had no hint of the biggest British political story of the month, as Michael Howard became what he had gone on the record as denying that he would ever be leader of the Conservative party.

Cynics suggested that the writing was on the wall for Iain Duncan Smith when his party colleagues began insisting to anybody who would listen that they were 100 per cent loyal to him.

November

Huge pressure on the US president was highlighted by the almanac as a defining characteristic of November so huge, in fact, that his very future in office was under threat.

But with the president riding high in public opinion and paying morale boosting visits to his troops, nothing was further from the truth.

In Britain, two events grabbed the headlines, one which was a joy hitherto undreamed-of and the other a nightmare of a kind replayed with depressing regularity, and neither was hinted at by Old Moore's.

England's rugby heroes brought the sport's World Cup home from Australia, bringing tears to the eyes even of people whose bodies were the size and consistency of brick outhouses.

But at the same time, the nation was transfixed by the grim details which emerged following the commencement of the trial of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr in relation to the deaths of Soham schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

The Countess of Wessex gave birth in November, but this was no more hinted at by the almanac than was the announcement of her pregnancy earlier in the year.

December

The story of the month, and arguably of the year was the capture of Saddam Hussein by US forces.

The former dictator had been literally holed up in a pit near his home town of Tikrit. His interrogation continues, with the Coalition hoping he will finally shed some light on the mystery of his alleged weapons of mass destruction.

The almanac does mention Iraq, but in the context of suggesting that it may be at war with neighbouring Iran.

It also suggests that Alaska and British Columbia are at risk of earthquakes, which is the right dramatic Act of God, but the wrong continent.v