As a child they were always my big brothers.

They played together.
They teased me together.
They looked after me together.
They went to football together.
They went to the pub together.
They buried dad together.

He was best man at the eldest wedding.
He looked after mum as she grew old and frail.
He looked pale mum said.
He was funny.
He was infuriating.
He was in pain.
He was my big brother.

[In memory of my brother Owen Hearty, who died of cancer yesterday, aged 53. Goodbye, and rest in peace Owen.]

Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

We people of faith don't like to say we told you so, but we did tell you so. Or at least, we would have told you so, if only we had some prophets around to tell you so. You see your problem is you only ever react to things after the event. You don't listen to our prophets when they tell you things, or even when they don't. Take the prophet Isaiah who didn't prophesy overworked social services departments, or the prophet Amos who didn't prophesy our throwaway society with its rampant consumerism. Then there was the prophet Jeremiah who didn't prophesy global warming, resource depletion and planetary overpopulation. You can't blame us for that one. I mean it's not as if religion told you to go forth and multiply, is it? Now look where it's got you. If only you'd listened to all our prophets not prophesying all these things. With the benefit of hindsight it would be better if we didn't have to rely on hindsight.

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Rating 2 out of 5 (A little platitudinous)

You may think you've got a scary day ahead of you. It might be your first parachute jump, or your first deployment to Afghanistan. Well just spare a thought for me. If you think what you've got to do is scary then just try presenting Thought For The Day. What if I can't think of anything interesting to say? What if everyone out there is just anxiously reaching for the radio to switch to Radio 5 Live for three minutes? What if someone mocks me - and there are people out there who do that just to be beastly. The world can be so cruel (sniff). You mustn't show fear to your critics though. They can smell it. Let them see your weakness and you're done for. Here at the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity where we work to equip Christians to engage biblically and relevantly with the issues they face, including Work, Capitalism, Youth Culture, Media and Communication, we know that Jesus is not afraid - although being 1/3 of the supreme being probably helps a bit there. So I'm not going to be afraid either. But if you are going to comment on today's TFTD, please say something (sniff) nice.

Does anyone have a tissue?

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Among the 195 deaths in the Mumbai attacks, were 6 Jews. Rabbi Holtzberg went there to provide Kosher food and Jewish rituals to Jews who were far from home. He encouraged Jewish people to do more Jewish things and so make the world a better place. He made sure the chickens were slaughtered correctly, in a land where very few chickens were slaughtered correctly.

The Chabad movement means that there are now little outposts of Judaism, the original (and in the opinion of many Rabbis, still the best) Yahweh club, all over the world. But I don't want to make it sound as if Jews have a monopoly on ancient wisdom. I've been to India and had dinner with the Dalai Lama. He turned out to have some ancient wisdom too, although he didn't know how to slaughter chickens correctly. I've also met Sikh leaders, who had some not-so-ancient wisdom, which again was sadly deficient in the chicken slaughtering department. I didn't find any atheists with any wisdom, even of the chicken slaughtering variety, and naturally I'm not going to mention another Yahweh club, some of who's members actually committed the atrocities in Mumbai, but are very good at slaughtering chickens as it happens.

I would like to mention The Holocaust and the nazis. That should prevent any smart ass from trying to take the piss out of my religion.

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Rating 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

I'm not one to comment on how other people choose to spend their time. If a bunch of boring, dysfunctional, misfits want to idle away the wee small hours tapping away on a computer keyboard, why should I care? It's no skin off my nose if these useless, idle, basket cases prefer the virtual world of Second Life to the complex, gritty, world of reality. I'll just settle for pointing you to the story of Mandy Appleyard. She met a man on Second Life. They had a real world relationship that eventually went sour. This reveals the perils of meeting someone online and should be a warning to you all.

I'm sure if The Prophet (PBUH) were alive today he would ban Second Life. Unfortunately the Koran, being the perfect word of my Invisible Magic Friend and the source of all knowledge and morality, doesn't mention the subject, so I'll have to give it a go. As Professor of Islamic Studies and Public Understanding and Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam, University of Glasgow, let me just assure you that the Invisible Magic Friend doesn't take kindly to people wasting the time He's given them. You should be using your time constructively, like me, not frittering it away frivolously on a whole bunch of made up stories.

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Due to family commitments I have to go to Scotland for a few days and am unlikely to be listening to TFTD. I'll expect to see some good summaries of the daily wisdom of it's presenters here when I get back.

Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

I've been to Mumbai railway station. I have friends there, in Mumbai that is, not in the railway station. I've seen the huge crowds of people milling around chaotically. Two days ago, terrorists opened fire indiscriminately on those crowds. Now it's no use getting all emotional about this. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering. Therein lies the path to the Dark Side. Nor must we jump to conclusions about who's responsible. (Although we've all got a pretty good idea who did it, eh? Bloody Methodists!)

It's so easy to condemn these people as a bunch of evil, delusional fanatics, that will stop at nothing to vent their anger and impose their ways by force on others, but let's look at this from the terrorists' point of view. They undoubtedly see themselves as holy warriors in a just cause. What could possibly have given them that idea? We just don't know. A holy book that tells them to kill the unbelievers and promises them eternal salvation in return is just too simplistic an explanation. As we all know, jihad is a spiritual journey, and Abrahamism Mk. III spread throughout the Middle East, North Africa and South-East Asia purely on the strength of its arguments. So the eternal question: "Why?" remains unanswered and a mystery that we must meditate upon.

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Rating 4 out of 5 (Highly platitudinous)

Apples' iphone advert has been banned. It's claims were too great a distortion of the truth, even for the advertising industry. We're all very streetwise these days when it comes to the exaggerated claims of product manufacturers. We don't really believe we'll whizz along an idyllic country road in our new car on the way home. It'll be the same boring old congested road that we've always used.

Fortunately there is no need to apply similar scepticism to the message of Jesus. While some other, wrong, religions might promise you happiness or wealth in this life, Christianity offers you interminably dreary sermons and a life of good, honest, misery - not that anything I have to say is interminably dreary. It's only in the next life that you get to spend eternity with the Invisible Magic Friend and countless billions of happy, smiling Christians. So no extraordinary claims there then. Two billion people out of a population of 6 billion currently believe this, so it must be true. In fact you'd have to be pretty stupid not to believe what two billion other people believe, wouldn't you?

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Stephen Green has performed another great service to the god fearing believers of this country, this time by starting an online petition against Patrick Jones' poetry reading to the Welsh Assembly. The comments express the deep pain felt by so many Christians.

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/wels ... res-1.html

There appears to be no end to the suffering that Christians must endure. First we had people refusing to enjoy Dec 25th the way they're told to, then the Catholics had to close all their orphanages to protect the children from godless homosexuals. Now this - a poetry reading! Can it get any worse than this? No wonder the world is in crisis.

[Update]. There's a counter petition here:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Patr ... index.html

Please spread the word. (Tip - ignore the attempt to make you contribute to ipetitions if you don't want to. It doesn't stop you signing.)