Captain Moonlight: 2001? Don't bet on it

SO, THE millennium. You will have seen the debate: does it begin in 2000, or do we keep the paper party hats, various colours, folded until 2001? You will have read that Peter Brooke, Minister for Fun, into whose ambit millennial matters fall, has decreed 2001. But should the Government's dry mathematics prevail? What, you ask, anxiously, are the precedents on this? What, you wonder, did they do in 1000? And, naturally, you turn to the Captain for illumination.

Well, having consulted widely with medievalists, I have to say we seem to be a bit in the dark, if you'll pardon the historical play on words. There are those who say that Europe went into paroxysms of penitential panic as 1000 approached, confidently expecting the end of the world. My authorities, however, are doubtful. Professor Norman Cohn, author of The Pursuit of the Millennium, believes 'they were completely uninterested'. There might have been a small pilgrimage to Jerusalem; and there certainly seems to have been one in 1033, the 1000th anniversary of the crucifixion; but little else.

Alexander Murray, the Oxford medievalist, blames the belief in general lamenting on the monkish chronicler Ralph the Bald, of Dijon, who reported upset peasants in the vicinity. Mr Murray says there is nothing to suggest that this was widespread, noting that contracts going beyond 1000 were entered into confidently, and that AD was one of several competing systems. (You should know that as late as 1620, Scotland was a year ahead of England.)

Nor is there any question of fingers being crossed until 1 January 1001: Dr Marjorie Chibnall of Cambridge is confident that 1000 would have attracted whatever attention there was. 'There weren't chaps like Peter Brooke around then,' is how Professor Frank Barlow, author of The English Church 1000-1066, puts it.

Something else, though. Word reached me last week that Lord Gowrie, resigning European head of Sotheby's, was particularly interested in the coming millennium, and saw a role for himself as Britain's Mr Millennium (Lord Millennium, I suppose, really). Thus I discovered the Millennium Fund, one of the intended recipients of the new National Lottery, and the six Millennium Commissioners, shortly to be announced, who will select methods and projects for celebrating the millennium, with a putative budget of pounds 75m. No news on Gowrie, but Peter '2001' Brooke will be on the commission.

Interestingly, however, according to the National Lotteries Act, the year to be celebrated is . . . 2000. Whoops. Last word goes to Rome. Plans for the millennium? 2000, 2001? The Vatican spokeswoman sighed: 'It is too early.'

(Photograph omitted)