Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Earlier this year the Met Office forecast a BBQ summer. Now, with two thirds of the summer gone, they've changed their minds. That's what you get for placing your faith in science, with their pressure readings and satellite photos and computer models. Everybody knows science is a load of rubbish. I mean, as I sit here in the studio, broadcasting to you live over the airwaves, I ask you, what has science ever done for us?

As a writer, celebrity and Christian, I'd like to remind you of the proven power of prayer. If there's one thing guaranteed to improve the weather, it's prayer. I pray for good weather all the time and the Invisible Magic Friend occasionally obliges - what more proof do you need? Of course I feel terribly guilty when he does. I'm probably depriving some poor farmer somewhere of his much needed rain. God, do I feel guilty. I'm such a horrible, selfish, loathsome wretch, but please Invisible Magic Friend, can we have some nice weather this weekend?

Scientists will try to tell you that the weather is a complex interaction of differential heating, the planet's spin and the subsequent sea and air currents. Then they try to cover their backs by saying that it's inherently chaotic and difficult to forecast exactly. Yeah, like! Even fictional characters know that the IMF decides when it rains and when it doesn't, although, in the film Jean de Florette one of those fictional characters, in an irrational bout of rage, goes so far as to question the existence of the IMF. Phew, what a loony!

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

In my loving Christian way, I was outraged, outraged I tell you, to hear of the bible defacing exhibition in Glasgow. There are only about 3 billion bibles in existence. How could anyone bring themselves to vandalise one of these rare and priceless items? These are the holy utterances of my Invisible Magic Friend! They wouldn't do it to the Koran, would they? Eh? Eh? There's a religion that really knows how to deal with mockers.

I calmed down however when I learned that this was, in fact, an attempt to engage with people of an alternative sexual inclination, who for some reason feel marginalised by the Church. The modern Church is really OK with people with a similar gender preference and doesn't pass judgement or condemn them for being unnatural, immoral or acting against the clear and unambiguous teachings of Leviticus and St. Paul. No, we don't do any of that sort of thing these days.

One of my favourite bits is the Book of Job. It's really funny. The IMF tortures this guy, called Job, by destroying all his possessions and killing all his children. All for a bet with the Invisible Magic Baddy. In the end, the IMF says, "Geee, you're so stupid and I'm so brilliant. Don't you ever question my almighty mercifulness again. Here, take your puny possessions, I'm bored." In a way it's just like the IMF making people who're attracted to those with a similar genital configuration and then writing that they should be put to death. He's got quite a sense of humour. How could people want to defile a book like that? I'm outraged, outraged I tell you.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

The people of Wootton Bassett bow their heads to passing soldiers' funeral cortèges.

Some people express their grief this way. Others don't.
Some people grieve by crying. Others don't.
Some people grieve in silence. Others don't.
Some people grieve through laughter. Other's don't.
Some people grieve by fasting. Other's don't.

Fasting is my favourite way of grieving. That's the way Jews do it, so you can be sure it's a tried and trusted method. Jews are grieving today. It's yet another annual Jewish festival. This time it's Tish'ah be'Av, a fantastically gloomy, day long fast, mourning the loss of the first and second temples. You'd think we'd have gotten over it by now, but no, several millennia on, we're still wailing and quoting from Lamentations and going "Woe, woe and thrice woe, we've lost our lovely temple - again." I'm sure you'd all agree, it's pretty much the same as losing a loved one in battle. We'd build another one, but unfortunately its place is currently occupied by the 784'th holiest place in Islam, so we can't touch it.

I get people coming to my synagogue grieving all the time. Grief is one of our best selling products. You can always rely on a steady stream of business in the grief industry. It's pretty much recession proof.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Lots of movie stars (the kind of people you materialist, fame obsessed, Radio 4 listeners look up to), are signing up to the 100 things challenge. This is an admirable attempt to achieve what, in the Western world, might pass for asceticism and is just what we need in the middle of the worst recession in a century: a campaign to stifle consumer demand. Fortunately, underwear, which we Sikhs are so attached to, counts as a single item. So never fear all you devout Sikhs out there, you can still have as much of all that lovely underwear as you can buy. In fact, now that you're cutting expenditure on other items, you can buy even more underwear.

No one, its seems, is ever prepared to get rid of all the unneccessary clutter that we accumulate in life. You could follow my own lead here. Only the other day, I freely chose, entirely of my own volition, to give away a leather jacket that my family always laughed at whenever I wore it. This is the kind of selfless disregard for possessions that you need to acquire.

The same goes for religion. Many ancient religions are full of unnecessary ceremony and absurd dress codes. Thankfully, Sikhism, being so new and fresh, is free of all this burdensome ritual. Apart, that is, from wearing a turban, a comb, a bangle, a sword and underwear (although we believe other religions have independently discovered the benefits of under garments, none of the others have so far had the wisdom to mandate their use). Even in the case of these few items, we would never dream of making a fuss over them or reacting violently to anyone who criticised them.

It's the bizarre practises of some of these other religions, who shall remain nameless, that leads to extremism. What could be more sinister than an obsession about ritual washing, say, compared to the pure and gentle wisdom of their holy books - whoever "they" might be. Despite my frequent participation in lavishly tax payer funded inter-faith initiatives, I still haven't been able to persuade any of these daft religions to budge one inch on their dated, pointless, trivial, irrelevant, mindless rituals. If only they could see beyond the ceremony, they would free up so much time to buy more underwear. All these other religions are just so obstinate and narrow minded, .

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Rating 5 out of 5 (Extraordinarily platitudinous)

Harry Patch couldn't bring himself to kill.
Even as a German soldier attacked his position, he wounded him rather than kill him.
"War isn't worth one life."
Hit by shrapnel from the same bomb that killed three of his comrades, he left the battlefield in Sep. 1917.
He married Ada in 1918. She died in 1976.
Their son Dennis died in 1984 and their other son Roy in 2002.
He outlived his two successive wives Jean and Doris.
He was the last surviving veteran of World War I.
He had no time for regimental reunions or Remembrance Day - "Just show business."

While we're remembering Harry Patch and the pointless horrors of the Great War, let's take time to remember Jesus. He was betrayed and temporarily died you know and he did it all for you. So remember to wear your crucifix to remember all the good things about Jesus. The thing to learn from the passing of Harry Patch is that Jesus loves you.

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Rating 1 out of 5 (Hardly platitudinous at all)

Brian here, an associate lecturer at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity where we envision and equip Christians, and the leaders, churches and organisations that serve them, with the biblical framework, practical resources and models to engage biblically, relevantly and vigorously with the issues they face in today’s world. Hi.

After last week's, "aren't the stars just amazing?" talk, I now want to turn my attention to butterflies. Aren't butterflies just amazing? Painted Lady butterflies flew here in their millions from the Atlas mountains in Morocco. Somehow they managed to reach a consensus on where to go for their holidays this year.

"How about Britain?"
"Nah, we went their last year, and the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that..."
"Britain it is then."

It's all so colourful, and poetic and pretty and... well... just amazing! And mysterious too. And now we're about to get up to a billion of these wonderful, delicate creatures emerge from their cocoons. It's a miraculous transformation from a grubby, unattractive, crawly thing into a colourful, winged natural wonder. Wasn't it nice of the Invisible Magic Friend to make butterflies?

Jesus doesn't have a lot to say about butterflies. In fact he never actually mentions them at all, but I'm sure when he said "consider the lilies", he had all the other nice, pretty bits of the natural world in mind as well. In one of his hippy moments, Jesus was telling us to lie back and enjoy the summer. After all butterflies don't worry do they? At least, not 'till they find themselves in the beak of one of the equally pretty birds.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Congratulations, and thank you for choosing "Church of England Weddings" to be your wedding service provider. We value your custom and look forward to charging you for the many additional extras that you'll be forced to take, like reading the banns, and providing you with certificates. "Church of England Weddings" are special because we care, we care about family values, we care about extracting the maximum fees from you on a day where, let's face it, you wouldn't want to do things on the cheap, would you?

To make your special day even more special, have you considered our new, low cost, combined Hatch and Match service? For only a little more than the cost of a wedding alone, we'll throw in an all-you-can-baptise kid dunking party! This value promotion is the ideal way to end your living in sin and join millions of proper people in real Church of England approved, theologically correct coitus. Kids will just love splashing around in the water as they join the Invisible Magic Friend club and remember, only Church of England baptisms come with state guaranteed sacramental grace*.

So what are you waiting for? The sooner you get in there, the sooner you'll be celebrating that 50th wedding anniversary, surrounded by real people, married people, procreating without sin people.

*[ "Sacramental grace" is an invisible magic thing and cannot be guaranteed to actually exist or have any testable or proven effect whatsoever. ]

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Rating 0 out of 5 (Not platitudinous)

There was nothing good on the telly last night so I'm going to have to talk about news.

Magdeline Makola was kidnapped, tied up, robbed and confined for ten days in darkness in the boot of her car. She had no food or water and had reconciled herself to her approaching death. Finally, on Boxing Day, she managed to make her muffled calls heard by some passing policemen.

Magdeline attributes her fortitude and her survival to her strong faith and constant prayers, but everyone has the capacity to summon up the same deep reserves of inner strength. Thanks to evolution, the instinct for survival is strong in all of us.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Here's the news from a faith perspective and the news is that I've been very busy indeed this week. I flew to Dubai which is full of really, really rich people where I wagged my finger at them, warning them about the profligate waste of fossil fuels and the damage it's doing to the planet. Then I got on the plane to Kenya, which is mostly full of poor people and I saw the consequences of selfish, rich people profligately wasting fossil fuels and damaging the planet - the bastards.

It reminds me of the story of Lazarus and Dives. Dives was a rich man who didn't help the poor man Lazarus. Dives actually means "rich man", so he was really well named - an early case of biblical nominative determinism. This story of hope and love tells how the rich man burns in hell for all eternity. So you just watch it, all you people who aren't poor enough.

The talk in Africa was all about China, an evil communist empire, full of rich atheists who slavishly follow the dogmatic teaching of their deluded communist founder. He thought religion was just the opiate of the people, that it gave them false hope of an after life and that we should strive instead to share the profits of capital among the proletariat. But we sang some really good hymns while we celebrated a fantastic happy-clappy communion, all washed down with Love. We knew that all those rich atheists would get it in the afterlife and that it'd be a really good laugh. We were so hyper after it all, not at all like being off your face on drugs.

Then we settled down to write a really good letter about being poor, before flying home to tell everyone about the irresponsible behaviour that's causing climate change.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

At 59, Tom Watson's performance at the Open reminds us all that we more mature citizens are not past it after all. Now in my late 70s, I think the producers of this programme should note that I'm not fluffing my lines or getting confused, like a certain Rabbi who shall remain nameless. Indeed, in more civilised cultures, the elderly, or at least those who still have their marbles intact, are respected for their experience, their wisdom and their lack of hormonal rage. As they become more and more senile, it is then that they are expected to become more religious.

Nowadays everyone keeps going on about young people. At the endless inter-faith conferences, where we discuss how different faiths can learn to stop hating one another, you just can't get them to shut up about young people. I've got nothing against young people, I was a young person myself once. I even know a few of them that aren't half bad. It turns out that many of them, despite not being over keen on religion, still share values that can only be obtained by following the examples of the Gurus. I wonder why that is? Young people can even be useful sometimes. It was the children of Guru Gobind Singh who helped resist forced conversion at the hands of the Mughals (who were Muslims and who are forever telling us that there is no compulsion in religion, but we won't mention that).

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