Top Of The Popes

with the Bishop of Thanet, The Right Reverend Harry Piehole

'Is the Pope a Catholic?' is a question I'm often asked, to which the answer has got to be 'Yes'. Although more recently the question has taken a slightly different form, with many of my flock asking me 'Is the Pope a paedophile?' To which the answer has almost certainly got to be 'No'.

Walking along one of our island's glorious beaches at the weekend, it was hard not to be reminded of Our Lord Godden's work. Empty buildings covered in graffiti, boarded up shops, and deserted amusement parks, peopled only by pit bulls and feckless youths sporting ugly tattoos.

In this Holy Week, let us pray that we soon find the courage to rectify these things, and that our once proud cities regain their status as the bustling seaside resorts of yesteryear, with the happy sound of laughing families pouring their ten pence pieces mindlessly into one-armed bandits, or attempting to mow down complete strangers on the 'dodge 'ems'.

It is true that Our Lord works in mysterious ways, and by providing us with jet propelled aeroplanes, he has given us the means with which we can warm our planet up, thus ensuring our climate here on the island becomes more like that of Benidorm so we won't need to go there any more.

Thanet Woman Finds Jesus In Xmas Dinner

by Isle of Thanet Gazunder Food Editor Gordon Ramsgate

A Westgate woman is praying that her pooch will pop out an early Christmas present following a foodie find that could be bigger than the last supper!

Author 'Dizzy' Lizzy Lumsden was noshing her turkey and trimmings at a Christmas dinner organised by a Birchington book club when she scooped up a forkful of peas and potatoes and screamed 'Jesus Christ!'

King of the Chews

'I looked at it and there was the very image of Our Lord sitting on my fork,' Mrs Lumsden told the Gazunder. 'I'd never seen anything like it. Once I got over the shock, I passed it round the table. Everyone agreed that it was the spitting image of the Messiah!'

Stable Condition

Mrs Lumsden asked the waiter to pop her find in the freezer so it would keep, and later took it home with her. 'I was going to auction it on eBay,' she said. 'I thought it would make a great Christmas present for somebody with religious views, or failing that somebody who collects decorations.'

Stigmata Sauce

But her dreams of jumping on the Jesus and Mary gravy train later came to nothing when her husband found the Son of God sitting in the freezer, popped it in the microwave and fed it to the Lumsdens' dog, Woofie.

'I could have crucified him,' said Mrs Lumsden. 'But in the true spirit of Christmas I forgave him. We're now hoping that, after its journey through Woofie, it'll turn out alright in the end.'

Mrs Lumsden is 38.

DFL Delivery

Cripes! That overnight spat on the last item has really put things in perspective for me! I mean, here I am, a suave, sophisticated, extremely well-educated media type from London who has come among you Thanetians to point out your idiosyncratic ways and help deliver you from the mire of carpet tiles, white van drivers and duffer-driven eyesores that blight your small island. Nothing less than Thanet's saviour in fact.

And there you all are, still bleating about 'DFLs', 'prols' and 'Islington dinner parties' like a bunch of mustachioed, perma-permed Liverpudlians caught in an 80s time warp.

No wonder I can't get a decent latte round here!

A Chance In A Pavilion

The ongoing row over whether Wetherspoons should get planning permission to turn some old church/cinema in a back alley here in the Millionaires' Playground into a pub aptly demonstrates the lack of joined up thinking in these parts when it comes to planning for a sustainable, seaside future.

In a prime pozzy on the seafront we have an edifice that would make an excellent hostelry - the Royal Pavilion, which has been empty all season since those Rankers upped sticks and relocated their casino to a shed at Westwood Chaos. Trouble is it's in a parlous state, as the council never saw fit to enforce the repairing terms of Rank's lease over the last 40 years. Which makes it a distinctly unattractive proposition for even an imaginative outfit like Wetherspoons, who recently opened a pub in Oxford called The Four Candles in honour of a former nearby resident, the late, great, dearly departed Ronnie Barker.

So now we have a rapidly deteriorating eyesore which will probably go the way of all our heritage bricks and mortar (West Cliff Hall, Marina Restaurant, Kent Terrace, the list goes on). If Wetherspoons do open an establishment in Ramsgate, perhaps they should name it the We'll Run This Place Into The Ground 'Cos The Council Don't Give A Toss And Then Bugger Off To Westwood At Which Point It'll Burn Down Or Be Accidentally Demolished and be done with it!

Click here to read about the Pavilion and Rank hypocrisy
Click here to read about Wetherspoons on Cllr Green's blog

Wobbly Grannys

A regular viewer of ECR TV has emailed me to point out a bizarre daub in Winterstoke Gardens - you know, where the council scrubbed off the graffiti, installed CCTV, then took the CCTV away, and where (surprise surprise) it's now covered in graffiti again. 'Blujah 2000' writes:

I found, by accident, a startling piece of graffiti on the Eastcliff. A folly lies naked and unattended en-route to the doggy park - daubed riotously upon the layers of other layers was the tag: Wobbly Grannys.

Yes, wobbly granny's what? I wish they'd bloody finish these messages. It's not Banksy, or is it? I think we should keep an eye on that area, Richard. They start off innocent, draw you in with their beguiling imagery, and bang! You've got a crop circle on your hands, or worse, a five storey apartment block in the middle of the sea.

Well quite. Even more bizarre is the slogan: 'Jesus is alive - come to church and get a life' which somebody has gone to all the trouble of engraving in the cement next to 'Wobbly Grannys'. What next, 'Romanes eunt domus'?