The XS Mallarkey club in Manchester is another corker and one that you should frequent if you live in that fine city. Once you are a member it only costs £2 to get in and if tonight is anything to go by you get a massive bill of great comics for your two hundred pence.
Most of the crowd enjoyed my set, but the encore of the Pope material caused some consternation (for only the third time really out of several dozen performances, but weirdly one other of these wa in Manchester). I got a bit indignant about the response of a few individuals and attempted to ad-lib some serious points, which were at least heart-felt.
After the performance a young lady came up to me almost fuming and told me that she may have misunderstood but she'd found the whole thing extremely offensive. She was a Christian and liked it when other people did jokes about Christianity but she felt I had gone too far, but admitted that she couldn't exactly put her finger on what was so offensive. I explained that the routine is not really have a go at Catholics, just pointing out the hypocrisy of a Pope who has loads of fine possessions and thinks that people in Africa shouldn't use condoms even though that is killing them. She agreed that this was bad. She didn't quite seem able to work out what had offended her. I suspect that some people just hear certain buzz words and don't listen to what is being said, though I also think that a lot of it might depend on my mood and how annoyed I appear about the subject (after four hours in a car and not enough sleep last night I was possibly more aggressive and sanctimonious than I intended).
But I was quite fired up as I drove home. The moon was low and huge and red and the roads were eerily empty. I drove down the M6 Toll road at great speed, all alone with my thoughts.
I had been thinking about something Mark Steel said the other day about the fact that religious people can take heart at the fact that if they are right, at least I will spend eternity burning in Hell for what I've done (and it they're not, I will spend eternity rotting in a hole, so it's win-win).
I started thinking about the repercussions of that. Because presumably if the people in Heaven take any pleasure in the suffering of the people burning in Hell, they will have committed a sin and have to join us in the lake of fire. But it'd be hard not to be a bit smug about it, wouldn't it?
Do you think people in Heaven can see Hell from where they are? Because personally I would be a bit appalled and sickened by the idea that other human beings had an eternity of agony because they hadn't quite made the grade. It would be hard to sit back and enjoy yourself knowing that others were suffering, even if that had "deserved" it because they had been in love with someone of their own sex, or failed to shun a menstruating woman or covetted their neighbours ox. Even if Osama Bin Laden or Idi Amin was burning in a big fire I would find it very hard to relax and leave them to it. Every instinct in my body would be saying, "Help the burning person out of the fire. I don't care what they have done. No-one deserves to burn. And certainly not for eternity."
How would that square up with the Christian ethos of helping others, just letting them frazzle away? How would that make you feel about a God who was happy to allow that state of affairs to continue? Would you begin to wonder if in fact all your life you had been praising a psychotic deity with no empathy for any of the creatures he had created? Would you ask him if it was really necessary for people to be burnt? Couldn't they just be made to do some community service or something? Or would you be scared to say anything in case you got thrown into the fiery pit as well?
I thought about the Catholic bit some as well. Although I don't much like the hypocrisy of the church leaders I don't have a problem with people being religious and when I keep saying Catholics are stupid I am obviously doing it for a joke. "Would you do that about Islamic leaders though Rich?" you might ask with a smug smile on your face. Well yes I would. The whole routine is about all religions anyway.
I thought of a good point to put at the end of the show, saying "Look Catholics, I don't really hate you and I don't think you are stupid. I am just showing you how annoying it is when people make snap judgements about you based on a life-style choice you have made. So now you know how the gay people you criticise feel."
I also think there might be something in saying I only oppose religious extremists who use a perversion of their peaceful religious texts to justify killing people - like the Christians George Bush and Tony Blair.
Not quite there yet, admittedly and maybe a bit satiiiyrical, but something interesting in it.
