STARGAZER CAINER
by Yasmin Boland

THE ASTROLOGER THEY COULDN'T BUY When Jonathan Cainer quit his job as the UK Daily Mail's stargazer, they offered him two million pounds to stay on. He's fast becoming the world's most successful stargazer. Astrologer extraordinaire Jonathan Cainer was hunched over his laptop in his central London pied-à-terre when I arrived to interview him. Santana's Smooth blared as he worked furiously on his column for the following day's UK Daily Express. Mercury was retrograde at the time (astrologically implying 'delays in communications') and Cainer was therefore not surprised to be encountering problems in, firstly, finishing his piece, and, secondly, sending it down the email line. While he worked, I surveyed; his flat was boutique, bordering on poky, with midnight blue carpet (needing a vacuuming), walls hung with patchworks and tapestries, and windows framed by purple, crushed velvet curtains. Astrological knick knacks were everywhere, on letter holders, maps, statuettes and more. A mere strip of a balcony looked down on to graffiti-covered inner city walls. It was more 'mystic bachelor pad' than the palatial opulence you might expect of this syndicated columnist, who's read by an estimated 10 million people a week. However, Cainer wasn't what you'd expect either. On the one hand, yes, his Cupid's Bow lips curl into an adorable smile as he speaks, and his Yorkshire lilt sounds as calming in real life as on his phone lines. He's an immediately likeable, smiling gent who wears nothing fancier than chinos, a well-ironed shirt and brogues. On the other hand, though, he - most unexpectedly - chews Nicorettes frantically (he quit a 15-year Camel Light habit four months ago), talks on his mobile incessantly, and tells you that he hates writing his infamous daily and weekly columns as much as he loves it. In another life, Jonathan Cainer might have been a psychologist. But in this one, he's been (in this order): (a) a passionate bass player, who wanted to make a living out of strumming his guitar (b) an LA nightclub manager in the 80s, who had a moustache, wore flares and "was fairly permanently stoned" and (c) a cookbook writer. Today - in no particular order - he's (a) one of the world's most popular stargazers (b) probably a multi-millionaire [and if he's not, it's only because he's a generous man] and (c) a devoted dad, and bereaved husband. His columns appear in the US, the UK, South Africa, Malaysia and Australia, including for this newspaper's colour magazine. He doesn't predict meeting tall, handsome strangers, so much as write 80-word parables. He often gets it so 'right' that he sounds like a psychic counsellor. His followers call him 'insightful', his critics 'obtuse'. Peta High, of the UK Association of Professional Astrologers says: "He's good because he introduced people to the idea that there are planets and influences, other than the Sun, which have influence over their lives." Cainer - born with the Sun, Moon and Ascendant in Sagittarius, at 8am in Surbiton, Surrey, UK, on 18.12.57 - didn't get into astrology until his 20s. He left school at 15, "without taking any of the appropriate exams", determined become a professional bass player. Life was grooving along in a 70s haze of sensimillia, Jethro Tull and poorly paid gigs, until, in one awful moment of clarity, Cainer realised his younger brother, Daniel, "was a far more talented guitarist than I'd ever be". So - altruistically? fatefully? - he offered to give up his own dreams to manage his bro's career. In LA. It's well-acknowledged in astrological circles that many discover astrology during a crisis, and Cainer was no different. "In LA, I was surrounded by lots of successful people, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to be successful in myself. You could call it a crisis, yes. "Managing the night club in LA, I met lots of oddball Californian musicians, many of whom were into astrology, one of whom did my chart. I was so impressed with his accuracy, but he just said 'It's not me, it's astrology. Anyone can learn it.' "Not much later, I walked into a Santa Monica bookshop and saw Teach Yourself Astrology on the shelf. 'Hmmm,' I thought 'shame I'm broke…'. I reached into my jeans pocket, and found a $50 note I didn't know was there. So I bought a pizza … and the book …" *** Today Jonathan Cainer lives the week in central London, and weekends in Yorkshire with his five children; Jessica 16, Minnie, 13, Jemima, 10, and twins Sofi and Izaak, 8. His wife, Melanie, died in surgery after a car crash in 1992, and he's since been raising the children alone, with the increasing help of nannies. He prefers not to talk about Melanie's death, except to say that it's taught him "many lessons". His website, www.cainer.com, is the UK's fifth most popular and reputedly worth L50 million. You can read your daily stars for free or pay $AUD25 a year to have them emailed daily, you can read Cainer's thoughts on everything from the latest eclipse to the Aspartame debate, and order personalised charts from his astrology shop, Horoscopes, in the tourist heart of the ancient city of York. When he quit his eight-year post as the UK Daily Mail's stargazer last year, after a row over his L500,000 phone lines, they reportedly offered him L2 million to stay - L1 million a year salary and a L1 million bonus. He said no thank you, and now he writes his Express column for free, relying on the associated phone lines for income.* He reasons "I have faith in my product, and from now on, will stand or fall entirely on what I do". Despite his growing international profile in the UK, US and beyond, he doesn't schmooze celebrities (his only really famous pal is spoon-bender Uri Geller) and he's far more like to be found rolling in the mud with the hippies at Glastonbury Festival than at a Cool Britannia showbiz event. He's a Stonehenge Summer Solstice stalwart, a meditator, pals with a gaggle of Tibetan monks, and, the day I interviewed him, was off to spend the entire week at the 'Big Green Gathering' festival in Wiltshire, for more hippy hijinks. Between all that, plus regular media interviews and seeing his kids, he churns out his columns every morning, on the road or not, submitting them the day before publication. He's written two Sun sign astrology books, and, when we met, was ruminating on starting a "depositary" for "psychics with information about missing people". Critics have accused of him of simply saying "Yes, I know everything's awful, but it is going to get much better" in 365 to the power of 12 ways. He doesn't deny it. "People read their horoscopes when they're having a crap time," he says. "I see the heavens as a cosmic clock with knobs and dials that you learn to read. "I was trained at the (prestigious) Faculty Of Astrological Studies and take astrology seriously. But sometimes - and I'm blushing as I say this - I'm writing the horoscopes and intuition takes over. I read it back, and wonder 'where did that come from?'. "Very often they are the forecasts which get the best responses." One British astrologer I spoke to told me "there's no doubt Cainer's channeling". Perhaps even 'channelling' his late wife, was the inference. Cainer didn't refute it. "If you'd asked me 12 years ago, I'd have vehemently denied any psychic ability, but experience has made me rethink my attitude to the paranormal. "I feel I 've spoken to my wife since her death, so that changed my ideas about incarnate and excarnate beings. I also feel very confident I've had several conversations with other departed friends." With words? Ouija boards? Via 'feelings'? "They come like whispers on the wind," he says, and you don't push it, because it's so generous of him to admit to this in the first place, when he knows he's prime fodder to be accused of being a deranged lentil-eater. Cainer belongs to the 'everyone is psychic' school of thought, but adds "we all have it trained out of us at an early age. I've seen this with my own kids. "You can tell when you've had a psychic encounter, because afterwards, you think "that didn't happen". After my wife died, and I felt I was getting communications, I felt it was imperative to start trusting my intuition." The first 'communication' came when Melanie 'appeared' to him at home - while, in 3D reality, she was on a hospital operating table, post her car accident. "I was serving the kids' tea, and suddenly there was sound and vision in the corner of the room," he told another interviewer. "It was Mel in a strange blue light, looking serene. She said 'Jon, I think I'm going…' I said: 'No you're not, I need you here.' She said: 'No, no, I think I am…' He found out shortly afterwards that she'd passed away during surgery. "There are more things in heaven and earth that we can't explain," he says now. "It's a glorious realisation that we simply don't know everything." *** Back in London in the early 80s, the still-broke but increasingly-astrology-obsessed Cainer wrote a cookbook titled Junk Food Vegetarian (now out of print). The publishers liked his style and asked him to write about astrological compatibility - not using the traditional date, time and place of birth methods he was trained in, but Sun sign astrology, based on the month of birth only. "'I told them 'No, sorry, I don't do that. I'm a proper astrologer'. "'That's a shame," they said "because we would have paid you.' "'Really? How much? And, er, who'll do it, if it's not me?' "'We'll get a journalist to cobble something together from a few other books …' they said. "Suddenly I realised why so many astrology books were rubbish … and I told them that in fact, I did, as it happened, have an electricity bill to pay." Newspaper astrology's most voluble opponents have tagged it "astrological prostitution". Even Cainer admits that writing astrology for the papers is a bit like "a classically-trained musician playing a toy xylophone. But," he adds, "even on a toy xylophone, a good musician could get a beat happening and have people tapping their feet." He rocks. * NB - since this article was written, Jonathan has decapmed again - he's now at the The UK Daily Mirror. He's also stopped chewing Nicorettes and is still not smoking - send him good vibes ... Let's see yer Moon Meditations then ... C Yasmin Boland 2000 test code june 15 2003