The vocal majority

I just watched a repeat of the best top ten lists of great top fifty comedy films. Top of the listing was... Life of Brian. I remember when it came out. There was a bussing system, because some local councils - including some that didn't even have cinemas - banned it and people from those areas took organised coach trips to see it. The Bishop of Southwark and Malcolm Muggeridge argued against it on a television programme , during which John Cleese pointed out that if the Pythons had made it 400 years earlier they'd have been burned to death. That means, he said, we've made some progress. I watched that programme with my parents and was heartened, even then, to see how much the audience sided with the Pythons and how the Bishop's secret weapon line about 30 pieces of silver was received completely unsympathetically as the contrived piece of bullshit it was.

If they made it now, or more to the point if they made a Life of Mohammed, they'd be hunted by Islamic Supremacists. Nobody would make such a film nowadays.

That is regress. Let's roll it back, folks, to a better time. It's the moment to get the old - and I do mean old - cameras out...

But let's remember this: people voted it the best comedy. There is a huge majority against this religious intolerance revival. Time to make our presence felt.