Media: Good heavens] I see stars: Astrology has become respectable. How do we know? It's in the 'Sunday Times', says Lisa O'Kelly

NOT SO long ago, whenever Shelley von Strunckel told people at parties what she did for a living, they would back off as though she had an infectious disease. 'That's changed. They are now intrigued, and there's usually this torrent of questions. It's getting to the stage where I try to avoid the subject, in case I get pinned to the wall all evening.'

Ms von Strunckel is an astrologer. And astrology (despite the fact that the Pope has just declared reading horoscopes a sin) is nowadays in vogue, not just at smart parties but among sections of the media where it would previously have been deemed dippy. 'It is,' declares Ms von Strunckel, 'a growth industry.'

Once the stuff of glossy magazines and tabloids, horoscopes have found their way into the pages of publications as serious as the Sunday Times Magazine, which recently appointed Ms von Strunckel to write the first weekly horoscope in its 30-year history, with a double-page spread to herself.

Ms von Strunckel maintains that astrology has been upmarket for years, only the serious papers didn't know it: 'The image of astrology is finally catching up with reality. It has been the best-kept secret in town for a long time. When you find out who consults astrologers, it is a combination of Debrett's and Who's Who.'

Women's magazine publishers have long recognised the power of the horoscope. Terry Mansfield, managing director of National Magazines, which has one in all its titles, from Harpers & Queen to House Beautiful, says: 'It is the cornerstone of any successful magazine. Human nature has a basic need to know what is around the corner, and for that reason I would never dream of starting a magazine without a horoscope.'

Tabloids and middle-market papers have long embraced the stars through a colourful cast of figures, from Mystic Meg and her crystal ball in the News of the World, to the doyen of them all, Patric Walker, in the London Evening Standard and the Mail on Sunday. But the posh papers have until now looked down on astrology as lacking in intellectual rigour.

Some have dabbled in it, such as the Guardian, with Chinese horoscopes, and even, briefly, the Sunday Telegraph, which ran a column penned by a mysterious Madame Mimm, who turned out to be Victoria Glendinning, the distinguished biographer of Trollope. None, however, felt entirely comfortable with it.

Now, thanks to what Ms von Strunckel terms a growing New Age awareness and a 'global craving in a godless world for moral values - something divine and larger than life', the serious papers are beginning to acknowledge that many of their readers take a keen interest in the stars.

Robin Morgan, editor of the Sunday Times Magazine, says his readers have been asking for a regular horoscope for ages. 'Horoscopes are read avidly by ABC1s and it is time we accepted that,' he says.

Over coffee and digestive biscuits in the Chelsea flat Ms von Strunckel shares with her barrister husband, she relates how she became involved in British astrology. A one-time buyer for a fashion store in her native Los Angeles, she had been interested in philosophy, religion and the history of stargazing since the age of 10, when her bedtime reading was the Time-Life Book of Religions of the World. Night classes in Buddhism and astrology during her late twenties helped crystallise a gnawing sense that retailing was 'too venal for my nature', so she chucked it in to become a full-time astrologer. Her rise was rapid.

Having built up a celebrity client list and established herself on the lecture circuit, she was offered a job writing horoscopes for Rupert Murdoch's Mirabella in the United States. Almost before her first column appeared, she was approached by Associated Newspapers as a possible replacement for Patric Walker, who wanted to wind down his daily column in the Standard.

For almost a year, Ms von Strunckel worked alongside the venerable Mr Walker - whose columns are syndicated around the world - being groomed to step into his shoes. Then the Sunday Times Magazine made her 'an offer I couldn't refuse'. She saw it as 'the culmination of Patric's efforts and mine to bring to our field the dignity it deserves, by going upmarket'.

Mr Walker, says Ms von Strunckel, has done more than anyone else to move astrology in this country from 'being viewed as anecdotal and insubstantial to being seen as of some real scientific and metaphysical substance'. This he achieved through introducing the concept of free will.

'He doesn't tell people it is in the stars that something specific is going to befall them, but says they will face X situation to which they will tend to react in Y fashion, and leaves the rest up to them,' Ms von Strunckel says. He also concentrates on what he calls the 'big four basic concerns': love, work, health and money.

This combination has spawned a new generation of upmarket stargazers, from the Princess of Wales to a whole range of politicians and economists, many of whom see Ms von Strunckel on an individual basis at her home but would have been embarrassed to be seen consulting a 'fortune-telling' astrologer of the old school.

Despite her disinclination for the gypsy side of things, Shelley von Strunckel often appears on BSkyB in fortune-telling mode, predicting, among other things, (correctly) the outcome of the last general election.

She predicts that astrology's presence in the media will grow over the coming years. 'What is astrology but the study of cycles? And cycles are the stuff of life, whether they are political, economic, emotional or natural.'

(Photograph omitted)