This paper takes its title from the recent judgment of the Court of Appeal in Auty and Others v National Coal Board (1984). Lord Justice Oliver stated that, “as a method of providing a reliable guide to individual behaviour patterns or to future economic and political events, the predictions of an actuary could be only a little more likely to be accurate (and would almost certainly be less entertaining) than those of an astrologer”.

The above statement was referred to by Stewart Lyon, immediate past President of the Institute of Actuaries, in his review of the Session 1983–84 at the Institute's Annual General Meeting in June 1984. Although the quoted passage had received all the publicity, he was more concerned with the judgment in the same case given by Lord Justice Waller who erroneously stated that the expectation of life was an average and assumed that everybody lived to that age and then died. Mr Lyon concluded his remarks on the subject by stating that the Appeal Court's handling of the Auty case raised the general question of whether the actuarial profession needs to adopt a more active approach to public relations.