Fortune rookies

Megan's house falls down days after she buys it. Carolyn twists her ankle in a pothole, injures her back in another fall and reverses her car into a tree during a driving test all in the space of a week. Gary gets dumped on New Year's Day having lost his dream job weeks earlier when his employer went bust. These are real stories of people experiencing chance events that coincide to their detriment.

Otherwise known as bad luck, most see it as a part of life that is beyond our control. Richard Wiseman does not. The University of Hertfordshire psychology professor and founder of Luck School refuses to accept these matters are in the lap of the gods.

He insists we make our own luck and has spent the last ten years making a science out of that age-old maxim. His most recent work - an attempt to link date of birth with good fortune - made headlines last week. The study of more than 40,000 people found that those born between March and August were more likely to be lucky in life than those born in winter months.

Fate academy

Wiseman is not trying to prove luck is determined at birth, though. He says it's not a matter of fate, and Luck School tries to prove this by turning unlucky people in to lucky ones. 'There is a science to luck,' he says. 'It revolves around how people think and behave. If you consider yourself unlucky, a change in behaviour can improve your lot.'

So can Luck School teach us to pick correct lottery numbers and guess right at roulette? Wiseman says no: 'Nobody can influence the spin of the roulette wheel. That's a matter of chance. Good luck is seemingly chance events that work out consistently well.'

For Wiseman, what can appear to be chance on the surface actually depends on behaviour. 'Unlucky people are closed to opportunities in life and, as a result, they tend to miss them,' he says. 'Lucky people, on the other hand, are always in the right place at the right time. It's their behaviour that puts them there.'

Makes you fluke

Gary Edminson, 36, who lost his job and was then dumped on New Year's Day, learned this. He considered himself one of Britain's unluckiest people before he went through Luck School in January. He says his fortunes were transformed after applying Wiseman's principles to his life.

'I wanted to start a travel business,' he says. 'But I needed £20,000 and was sure the bank wouldn't lend it to me. Normally I wouldn't have even tried, but I made a business plan and gave it a go. The bank manager said they'd only lend me half of what I needed, which wasn't enough. But she said a man had been in three days before who wanted to do exactly the same as me and that I should contact him. I did and I'm now a partner in a business due to open in August.'

A stroke of fortune brought on by Luck School? Possibly, but Megan Ingram, 29, a recruitment consultant whose house fell down days after she bought it, is not so convinced. 'Luck School didn't improve my lot,' she says. 'Attitude can make a difference but no amount of positive thinking would have protected me from a negligent surveyor. Some things just happen and you can't avoid them.'

Wiseman doesn't guarantee a 100 per cent success rate. He says around two in three people who go through Luck School enjoy positive results. So it doesn't work for everyone. But at those odds, it's worth a punt.

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