Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Isn't the economic news just terrible? Falling house prices, credit squeezes, rising inflation? Far be it from me to gloat over those who are now paying the price for their own excesses, but if you'd all followed Jewish law this would never have happened. I mean I don't like to say "I told you so", but I did tell you so. Religious people learn to be moderate, to show self restraint. You'll never find someone with a religion, especially the Jewish religion, doing anything to excess. Those of you without a religion just want to consume as much as you can. You're just looking for sex all the time. It's just sex, sex, sex, me, me, me. Well now you're going to have to pay for all your greed and your lust. You're going to have to suffer negative equity!

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Mohamed Al Fayed has decided to call it a day on his investigations into the death of Diana. "I’m leaving the rest for God to get my revenge," he said. But will god exact revenge on Tony Blair, Robin Cook, MI5, MI6, the CIA, the French intelligence service, Judge Stephan, the French ambulance service, Lord Condon, Lord Stevens, the Surrey coroner, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, two bodyguards, the French pathologists, a photographer called James Andanson, the chauffeur, a reception clerk at the Ritz, the British ambassador, the Queen's private secretary, her solicitor, and - of course - Prince Philip and Prince Charles?

In fact, my invisible magic friend is not a vengeful god at all, despite the fact that he repeatedly says he is throughout the Old Testament. By page 3 of the bible he's already condemned all of humanity, for ever, for the sin of wanting to understand things, and he did throw the odd tantrum with Sodom and Gomorrah and the occasional worldwide flood with the killing of just about everybody. Sometimes he wasn't nasty through anger. Job, for example, was tortured in pursuance of a bet with the invisible magic baddie. These however were all just youthful aberrations. By the time of the New Testament, the unchanging invisible magic friend had changed his mind and decided to become a nice god. Although he seemed to have changed his mind again by the time he got to Mohammed, but that's a wrong religion so we'll stick with the nice god.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

Robert Mugabe is having trouble relinquishing power. He's been in charge for so long and has held so much power, that he's afraid to let go. We all know people who have abused their position, who have built up power bases and then used them to bully and disenfranchise others. Of course, I'm not going to mention any names here, that would be quite improper on an exclusive religious slot such as this, but you know the type of person I mean.

The Christian God is not concerned with absolute power, well not since the Old Testament anyway. For proper Christians, of which I am one, God is revealed through knowledge and understanding, not through force of will - a lesson which certain other, so-called Christians, particularly the leadership of a certain Oxford Hall, which shall also remain nameless, should take to heart. Fortunately, I get to tell you about the nice version of the Christian God here on TFTD and they don't, so we proper Christians get the last laugh after all. Ha, ha!

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Rating 2 out of 5 (A little platitudinous)

It will soon be the festival of Vaisakhi when Sikhs celebrate the founding of the Khalsa (Servants of God) by Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th and final Guru. On that day, Sikhism was set in stone. We decided to stop cutting our hair and to start wearing turbans to celebrate the fact that no part of humanity is set apart and only we know this. You won't find us looking down on other faiths. Some people like to make fun of other faiths, or even faith in general. Well that is precisely how Nazi Germany started. Given the global problems that we face, why can't we all just get along?

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

There are two wildly different groups in Britain today, it's not the rich and the poor, or the privileged and the powerless; it's the believers and the secularists. These are, of course, mutually exclusive. It is therefore not in the least bit contradictory to suggest that we moderate believers have embraced democracy and civil rights. Significant lumps of the church have discarded their original basis in hierarchy and compulsion. Just because we've thrown these bits away doesn't mean what is left is also questionable.

There is an annoying tendency for secularists, whom you'll recall are the opposite of nice religious people, to express their opinion every time they're given the opportunity. This is being aggressive and militant. We believers in the invisible magic friend never do this, and when we do, we do it in a pious and holy way. We do so quietly, in schools, churches, hospitals and anywhere where people are vulnerable or cannot escape our control. We do it on ring-fenced radio slots like this, where militant, aggressive secularists (who are bad) are excluded.

Remember, every time you say something nice about secularism, you're driving another nail into poor, suffering, Jesus.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

The Olympic torch is being carried through London. Hurrah! But it's on it's way to the evil Chinese, who refuse to allow peaceful Buddhist monks to retake control of Tibet. Boo! Bad Chinese! Bad!

Light is a metaphor for good and so for my invisible magic friend, who also happens to be good. It is a metaphor for hope and therefore symbolizes my invisible magic friend's eventual triumph over the invisible magic baddy (who, despite all his burning fires, doesn't have much light). So every time you light a candle, or flick a light switch, you are in fact siding with my invisible magic friend. Isn't that nice.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Tony Blair, that great man of peace, thinks faith should play a more prominent role on the world stage. And why not - it's always been so very helpful in the past. This will go down a treat in America, which has learned to be tolerant by basically insisting that everyone has to be a Christian. It seems strange that, all over the world, different religions are dividing people and setting them against one another; it's never done that before. I can't understand how people with different invisible magic friends, each of which insists that all the other invisible magic friends are wrong, can be so intolerant of one another. Clearly, we need more faith and more talk about our invisible magic friends. That should make things better. Britain, which basically ignores religion, needs to become more tolerant, like America.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Ben Elton has complained that the BBC doesn't allow jokes about Imams. Anyone would think that muslims didn't have a sense of homour about their faith. This is nonsense, as Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding and Director of Centre for the Study of Islam, University of Glasgow, let me just assure you that we muslims like a good belly laugh as much as the next person. So go ahead, make some jokes about the Koran, draw some cartoons of the Prophet (PBUH), name a teddy bear Mohammed. Take my word for it, you'll die laughing.

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Rating 1 out of 5 (Hardly platitudinous at all)

My daughter has a 50,000 ZWD note, which was about enough to buy a loaf of bread in Zimbabwe 2 years ago. While the poor suffered, Robert Mugabe has done well for himself. As the psalm says, the wicked prosper. Beaten down by years of brutality and oppression, the one thing the people of Zimbabwe had was hope, hope that things might change. We now hope with them, that the recent poll will result in the departure of Mugabe, and the installation of Morgan Tsvangirai as president.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

I, together with many other learned and eminent religious experts, was invited to an inter-faith meeting by Pope Benedict, or my friend Benny, as I like to call him. Of course, inter-faith meetings aren't really necessary since we all mix so readily and get on so well with each other already. Thankfully Europeans are finally coming to appreciate and understand other cultures, by which I mean religions - what else is there to a culture? For far too long, we have concentrated solely on Muslims. (I just want to point out that Sikhs and Muslims are quite different. We don't spend our time flying planes into office blocks for example.) If you go back to the source teachings of the world's great religions, you find a message of universal tolerance and peace, or at least you do in Christianity and Sikhism (although I'm pointedly not mentioning a certain other one which shall remain nameless for fear of giving offence - but which should definitely not be confused with Sikhism).

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