JERUSALEM: WHAT'S IT GOT TO DO WITH THE CHURCH?

The country has gone topsy-turvy.

Brits are taking Augusta apart in the Masters golf! Brits are winning swimming gold medals at the World Championships!! Rangers are winning European matches abroad!!! And now an Anglican Cathedral wants to ban the singing of the stirring hymn Jerusalem …

Apparently the Dean of Southwark Cathedral, the Very Rev Colin Slee, told the congregation at a private memorial service last week that the hymn would not be sung because it was "not in the glory of God".

Quite right, Col. What’s it got to do with a mythical supernatural being? It’s a fantastic blood-stirring tune obviously designed to gird the loins of our sporting heroes before they go into action. It should be sung before every international match involving England (Scotland, Wales, and Ireland have their own blood stirrers).

The words of William Blake and the music of Sir Charles Hubert Hastings Parry must never be silenced to pander to Christianity.

I will say, however, that if there were a God, of course he would be British. English British, of course, but I don’t want to alienate the rest of the Union (not with Rangers going so well).