Pop stars at prayer – from Madonna to the Beatles, and jihadist Cat Stevens

A spoof in the Israeli Daily recently had Eminem planning to convert to Judaism and move to Tel Aviv. But I don’t think we’ll be seeing that any time soon – he’s not really waiting for the Messiah, he’s just a
very naughty boy. Still, stranger things have happened.

I was very amused by the Reverend Richard Coles recently; when asked if he is the only vicar who has ever topped the British pop charts, he said ‘Yes, but I met the vicar of Hitchen the other day and I said ‘We’ve met, haven’t we? Was it through the church?”‘ Apparently the vicar of Hitchen replied ‘No, I was in Pigbag in the 1980s!’

I’ve complained before about that monumentally irritating type of contemporary cretin who gushes ‘I’m not religious, but I am very spiritual’ – often some sacked sportsman or spurned starlet trawling after a way to seem ‘deep’ after a lifetime of treading water in the shallows.

These desperately-seeking-something saps, of course, go about seeking enlightenment in completely the wrong way; they see spirituality as something that will take them deeper into themselves, and give them more utterly superfluous ‘me time.’