I'll have a fiver on hymn

Bish bash bosh

Ladbrokes have suspended betting. No surprise. These things happen. Is there a failure to weigh in at Rippon, are the stewards getting busy at Devon and Exeter? Are they feeding the favourite in trap six pork pies again at Walthamstow?

Nothing like that.

Dodgy keepers being deliberately dodgy? Football fixers approaching match officials? Not cricketers and no balls again, surely? Boxers taking dives? What then? Snooker? Darts?

Nope. None of those, either.

They've suspended the book on who will be the next archbishop of Canterbury due to a rush of what looks like smart insider money pouring on the Bishop of Durham.

So you dropped a button on the plate,

And spewed up in the church...

What are they wagering? Silver chalices? The spire restoration fund? Buttons and foreign coins from the collection plate?

I'll see your hail Mary and raise you a confession. I can see the cards, the smoke, the whisky, and the stacks of communion wafers piled up like poker chips.

“Ya ganna bet, Fader, or what?”

“Shaddup. I'm tinkin' 'aint I.”

“Hey guys...”

“Hey, look, it's Fader Louis, whadd'ya know Louie?”

“I gadda stoolie on the synod, know whadda mean?”

“So...”

“So get ta'bookie an' get on Durham.”

“Durham? Dat bum? Jeez.”

“Dat bum's da new Capo da Kent. I got tree ta one at Ladbrokes.”

Maybe the selection process could be more like the dogs. “Over to Harringey for the 7:27 Archbishop race. And the choirboy's running, and the confessionals are open, and they're off. It's the one vicar at the first bend, from the rabbi out of trap two...”

Maybe they could open it up to different religions. We could have an Archbishop with locks and a huge spliff preaching the benefit of d'erb. “Man, dat pope-dude. Dat's one silly hat”. Or a Jedi Knight. Archbishop Yoda. “Lesson today's it is. Gospel according to Master Luke it's from...”