Octogenatian Footballing Neanderthal Clergy

Overheard in the Caravan:

Chairman (reading from VS Ramachandran’s ‘Phantoms of the Brian’): “’Temporal lobe epilepsy patients tend to be pedantic, argumentative, egocentric and garrulous. They also tend to be obsessed with abstract thought.’ Who does that sound like to you?”

Hay: “You.”


Overheard in the Caravan:

Chairman: “What worries me more is that every previous warming event has been followed by an Ice Age. How would we survive that?”

Hay: “What, with your massive lungs and body hair? On an evolutionary basis you’re barely out of the last Ice Age.”

A well prepared Chairman

Scotland’s Alex Salmond Sadly Mistaken

Alex Salmond, the Scottish First Minister, yesterday called footballers ‘role models’.

Which ones would that be then? Danny Blanchflower, Stanley Matthews or Pele perhaps? Can’t think of a member of the current crop who I’d like my son to have as a role model.

Footballing heroes?

80 Year-Old Bloke Proves Octogenarians Have a Use

Rupert Murdoch, an 80 year-old (in a few days) Australian and sometime American, has proven that an octogenarian can still have enough brain cells to run a vast business empire that makes huge amounts of money and run rings around young whippersnappers.

It is thought that the government will use this as justification for pushing the state pension age to 80.

Christian Sect Disenfranchises Computer Programmers from Clerical Hierarchy

Everyone is familiar with the antediluvian argument that the Church should not admit women as bishops due to Jesus not choosing women as disciples.

A new Christian sect, The Latter Day Church of Pedantry, is taking this biblical exegesis to its logical conclusion by only admitting to its priestly class those whose occupations match those of the disciples.

Arch Grand Hierophant, Daniel Birdseye, a former fisherman, said: “Jesus did not employ computer programmers and thus they cannot be admitted to our clergy. There is an argument that Doubting Thomas may have been a systems analyst, as doubting is essential to getting a system working correctly; however, we have no direct proof of this. Similarly telephone sanitisers, call-centre operatives and particle physicists are forbidden entry to our ranks.”

He goes on to say: “Former members of the IRA and Al Qaeda are permitted to join us, along with criminal Supergrasses.”

The occupations allowed are as follows:

Peter – Fisherman
John – Fisherman
James – Fisherman
Andrew – Fisherman
Philip – Fisherman’s Friend
Bartholomew – Unknown
Thomas – Unknown
Matthew – Tax Inspector
James, the son of Alphaeus – Unknown
Thaddeus – Unknown
Simon – Zealot, or Terrorist
Judas – Police Informant

Given than Philip is listed as the friend of a fisherman - or Fisherman's Friend – it could be interpreted that he was a maker of lozenge shaped sweets, although this is unlikely, as Fleetwood was not at that time an integral part of the Roman Empire. That is not to say he couldn’t have migrated there as part of the Jewish Diaspora and had the surname Lofthouse (an upper room where a Last Supper could be held).

There is a tenuous Jewish link with Fleetwood in that Peter Green, the Jewish guitarist, is a former member of the iconic popular beat combo, Fleetwood Mac.

A small splinter sect, The Church of the Utterly Literal Interpretation, has forbidden any but Jews to the clergy on the basis that Jesus chose only Jews. A rider stipulates that such Jews must have Anglicised Greek names. Naturally, the sect is extremely small.

Bishop Rebecca and Revd. Tabitha - members of the clergy.