Selling the future is a dirty business. Whether it's timeshares, astrology or the betting shop, common sense tells us that no good can ever come of any of them. Yet still we come - especially to horoscopes - which, like porn, we can meddle with in private. But is there any sense in it? Can we really get an angle on life from knowing that Venus is rising? Well, we can try.
As Dave Gorman hits the midpoint in his six-week Important Astrology Experiment on BBC2, hoping to improve his life by following his stars, I have attempted a similar thing. With none of the same resources, I have compared and modelled my life to the wisdom of the spheres over a seven-day period. The results are deeply disturbing, though probably only for me.
Thursday
My guides on this journey into tomorrow will be the daily papers, the internet and a plastic "Orb of Love" some joker palmed off on me as a present. You know the kind of thing - you shake it and a little plastic dice floats into view that says, "Forget about it". First stop, though, is Astrology.com for a free personalised horoscope. Apparently, my life is "all about reward". I will refuse to do things "because they cannot meet my high standards". I "do not radiate much sympathy". I am "enormously lazy", addicted to "earthly pleasures", as well as obstinate, predictable and unimaginative.
Good God, how do they know all this? I gave them the exact date and time of my birth and a torrent of (deadly accurate) abuse spews out seconds later. What a start. Over at Care2.com, my biorhythmic chart explains that physically I should be staging a comeback, while intellectually and emotionally I shall be peaking later on this week. Hoo bloody rah. As a control, I enter the same details but say I was born in 1888. To my amazement I am informed that in spite of being the world's oldest man I am physically in better shape than my real self. Emotionally and intellectually, though, I'm at an all-time low. Well, I guess I'm in a home and all my friends are dead, so that's to be expected.
Oh, apparently my great passions are gardening and food. Which is a shame seeing as I live in a flat and seldom eat anything other than with my hands after midnight. Still, you live and learn.
In the papers, Sarah Bartlett in the London Evening Standard advises me to "flex your mind rather than your rule book", while Mystic Meg takes an early lead in the gibberish stakes with the statement "Single? Your new love is a very talented cook". Before counselling that "quiet words achieve more than angry ones". Struggling to take all this on board, I head out to a media-frenzy venue launch/gig. My mind, rather than being flexed, is numbed by free ale and rock (music). Quiet words are soon abandoned in favour of demented yelps. Punishment is swift as, walking home, I get glass in my shoe and injure my foot. Distraught I turn to the orb for advice. "Focus and ask again," it says. I pass out in my clothes instead.
Friday
I feel like death. "Be strong with a relative who treats your home like a hotel," says Meg. Balls, unless she means a hotel they wouldn't dream of visiting. No one comes round. Jonathan Cainer in the Mirror (with whom Gorman has become obsessed) seems fixated on luring you to premium-rate phone lines to learn "more". Fat chance. I'm already out of my depth. There is a moment of insight from Sarah Bartlett, who says, "Working late is a good get-out clause". I do indeed work late on Fridays in a local disco. But get-out-of-what clause - bed? Who knows. I return at 3am, closer to death but considerably richer. On what should I spend it, orb of wisdom? "Can't say now," comes the reply.
Saturday
In spite of my riches, I still feel dreadful and am walking with a limp. "You need an outlet," says Astrology.com. Tell me about it. "Purchases made today will be well worth it and they will last a long time." I buy cigarettes and milk and spend the rest of the day indoors.
Sunday
Justin Toper, salted away at the Sunday Mirror and still looking like the Witchfinder General, says there's "no harm in the current rumours that are circulating", but this should not prevent me "going merrily on your way". I walk down the street to the pub and am followed by a child blowing a paper trumpet. Why wasn't I warned? What little faith I had begins to ebb away.
Monday
In the Sun, Meg says, "Both luck and love connect you to uniforms". And apparently Venus is all over me. To be honest, I am more taken with the fact that Striker, the former football cartoon adjacent to the Sun's horoscopes, now stars a Frenchman and appears to be set on an 18th century plantation. Astrology.com says, "The music that you play says a lot about your state of mind". This is just after I have played AC/DC's Highway To Hell to cheer myself up. Stay in, watch TV and wait for Satan.
Tuesday
A vintage day for bullshit, even by horoscope standards. Sarah Bartlett says, "There's little you can do about being in a catch-22 situation" then adds that "your reputation isn't at stake, but your integrity is."
I wasn't aware of either.
Jonathan Cainer, who is slowly lapsing into Alan Partridge levels of metaphor-mixing, says, "Put it behind you, draw a line in the sand. Then fill that line with cement." I think he means the past, which to be fair I tend to dwell on, so one point to Jonathan.
Meg meanwhile urges me to "try a new way of living". Like what exactly, breathing CO2 and exhaling oxygen? Back off, you heathens. I'll make my own luck. Eat snails in restaurant and am so sick that I hallucinate.
Wednesday
Disenchanted, feeling weak and abstract, I fill out an online internet horoscope questionnaire in a effort to determine who is my "Ideal Hollywood Leading Man". I'm not normally that way inclined but what the hell. Questions include, "Where is the last place you'd go to meet a man?" Answer, "church" and "Is Ricky Martin more attractive then Bono?" - which I still can't answer. It says I should seek out the company of "Matthew Broderick, John Cusack, Ed Norton and Ben Stiller". Because I am "influenced by Mercury", possibly Freddie Mercury.
All this soothsaying is driving me to despair. It's all say and no sooth. For the last time (in my life) I check the daily online forecast. "Growth and development have tamed you," it thunders. "It's time to live life on the wild side!" Words of wisdom, finally. Reading between the lines, I think they're telling me to pack it in. Wild side, eh? Well I doubt Lou Reed has ever called Mystic Meg's tarot line, and neither will I. I make a note never to listen to anyone again. "Unlikely," says the Orb of Love, mocking me one last time. I give up.
· Talk to Dave Gorman online on Friday, 2pm, at talk.guardian.co.uk
· Dave Gorman's Important Astrology Experiment, Sunday, 10.40pm, BBC2.
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