I DIDN’T watch Derren Brown predict the National Lottery numbers, but I suspect there was more than a little hocus pocus involved.

I attempted to do the same thing last Saturday - along with several million other people - and as usual, failed miserably.

Whatever the illusionist did, I hold the view that it is impossible to predict such things. If it were, I’d be writing this column from my luxury yacht, moored in crystal blue waters off a Fijian island.

You can predict many things in life, but few that will help line your pockets. Take the races – punters spend hours studying the form to predict the result, yet some do just as well betting on horses with names they like. And games like roulette are complete games of chance – you can’t possibly predict where the ball will land.

But I can, with absolute certainty, predict that when my children arrive home from school, the first thing they will say is: ‘What’s for tea?’ And when my husband gets back from work, he will repeat the question.

I can predict when we will run out of cereal (every other day) and when my overdraft will reach its limit (a week after payday).

As for other, more life-changing stuff, I wouldn’t even try. On a recent visit to a fair we passed many fortune tellers. I remember succumbing to one after a break-up with a boyfriend, to be told I would marry someone ‘with a P in his name’ and have four children. For months, I flirted outrageously with every Peter, Paul and Patrick that crossed my path - that’s probably why I ended up marrying a man with no P in his name, and having half as many kids.

People constantly try to predict the outcome of other people’s relationships. ‘It won’t last’, is a phrase frequently bandied about. Peter Andre and Katie Price didn’t –I suppose that was predictable.

Seismologists are supposed to be able to predict earthquakes, but haven’t yet, so far as I know.

If Derren Brown is such a whiz at predicting he should turn his hand to the weather. The forecast has been wrong so many times I take no notice. In summer we changed plans on a few occasions based on a terrible forecast and each time bar one it turned out glorious.

I can’t deny I’d love to predict the lottery. I’m having another go this Saturday. And I can predict, for absolutely certain, that my prediction will be way off the mark.