Jonathan Cainer

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Jonathan Cainer is a British sun-sign astrologer.

Cainer writes a daily column on his website that is reproduced in the Telegraph in Australia and the UK Daily Mail newspapers, in addition to a wide diversity of Internet sites in five or so different languages, including Japanese. He has also previously spent some time writing for the Express and Daily Mirror newspapers. His website includes weekly predictions, contributions by other writers, and more recently, the first Saturday's weekly predictions in each month provide an overview of the month ahead.

The Independent newspaper reported in October 2005 that: 'He's a self-declared touchy-feely liberal and "unreconstructed hippie" who took his children on the anti-Iraq war demo'. The same article implied that the Daily Mail would not even like him if he didn't make so much money for them. [1]

As a young man, he worked through the diploma course of the British Faculty of Astrological Studies. According to Cainer, when the final submission of coursework was due on a Friday, his class were told they needn't hand their course-work in until the following Monday (this version of events was disputed by the faculty at the time), giving them the weekend to polish the work. On the Monday Cainer and three fellow students had their entries refused as it was three days past the deadline.[2]

The three other students retook the year and went on to pass their diplomas, but Cainer left without the qualification, and got his first job writing sun-sign columns.

[edit] Jonathan Cainer on the "James Randi - Psychic Investigator" series

Jonathan Cainer was a guest on the first episode of the "James Randi - Psychic Investigator" series in 1990, made by Open Media, aired by Granada Television. The episode was about astrology, part of which included a test to help establish the accuracy of astrological techniques and predictions.

Prior to the show, Cainer was provided with the date of birth information for everyone in the audience, which included a number of celebrities including Stephen Fry, Hugh Lawrie, Jilly Cooper and Nina Mishkoff. Cainer was given one of these dates of birth, which he was to use to put together an astrological horoscope and provide a description of this specific person based upon it. Cainer claimed that the horoscope he had drawn up should be individual enough for the person to recognise themselves. All audience members had submitted their dates of birth and nobody, except for the chosen person and the production team, knew who had been selected.

The horoscope predicted that the characteristics of the subject person would be:

An extrovert, unusual and larger than life. Full of confidence with a zany sense of humour. Eccentric and controversial. Would enjoy the limelight when it was revealed that it was their horoscope that had been chosen. Professorial and intellectual with a well trained mind; speedy, alert and quick witted

A show of hands revealed approximately 15 members of the audience thought the horoscope sounded like theirs, including one of the celebrity guests, Stephen Fry.

The person who had been chosen as the subject of Cainer's horoscope test was in fact Hugh Lawrie, Stephen Fry's comedy partner.

On asked whether anything in the horoscope applied to him, Lawrie responded "I wouldn't say very much, no". Lawrie also said that he didn't consider himself to be an extrovert, nor professorial (getting the lowest degree possible at university). Cainer considered "professorial" to be a hit, as Lawrie had gone to university.

Cainer reminded Lawrie that the horoscope had included "a good sense of humour", to which Stephen Fry asked the audience - "Hands up in this audience anyone who thinks they have not got a sense of humour".

Stephen Fry said of the horoscope test "it would have been a brilliant one of me, that's the odd thing. People do regard me as professorial in some way or another; Hugh isn't at all. He's certainly not extrovert...and certainly not confident, in fact I seem to spend a good 90% of my life trying to make Hugh more confident".

Cainer told Fry "I think you do your friend a grave injustice because I've looked at his horoscope and I'm sure he's capable of far more than that", to which Fry responded "Yeah, well I've looked at him you see".

The host of the show, James Randi, turned to Cainer and said "Well Jonathan, it doesn't seem that Hugh and Stephen are entirely convinced by your reading and, even more interesting, many people in our audience tonight thought that it could be them as well. What explanation could there be for that do you think?" Cainer replied "Oh, a very simple one that, of course, what we're testing here is is my ability to communicate and of course you must understand that in newspapers I specialise in saying things that do apply to a lot of people at once".^[1]

NB. Jonathan Cainer was a guest on the Jools Hollands New Years Eve Show(broadcast 31st 07 BBC2)Asked by Jools Holland for any 'big' predictions for 08 Jonathan Cainer 'There is only one 'big' prediction - Hillary Clinton will be the next President of the USA'