27th September 2011

Comedians are funny people.

Did you hear the one about the big society?

It was so big I couldn’t get it through the door, boom, boom!

And there’s nothing funnier than a funny clergyman.

So it was quite a gift to the script writers when the CofE ordained women as Priests and The Vicar of Dibley was born.

Not quite so funny for every shortish, plumpish Lady Vicar since Dawn French made the role her own.

I always hoped that, having pretended to be a Vicar Dawn French would discover her inner calling and become one, like the singer from The Communards who is now a broadcasting Vicar.

Apparently Rowan Atkinson wrote a piece in the Times at the weekend describing clergy as Smug, Arrogant or Conceited.

I must admit that I missed his article.

At the weekend I read the Financial Times, I enjoy reading about how the wealthy make it and spend it.

Oh dear, does that sound Smug, Arrogant or Conceited?

I guess I am not one of Mr Atkinson’s fans, but he has many and has made a good living pretending to be Marcel Marceau as Mr Bean, a first World War Officer in Blackadder and a Vicar in Four weddings and a Funeral.

So why does he think clergy are smug, arrogant or conceited.

Maybe it is that, having created the prototype for a certain kind of ridiculous clergyman; he needs from time to time to reinforce the caricature in order to continue to make comedic capital from it.

My dictionary defines the charges as follows.

Smug: Contentedly confident of one’s ability, superiority, or correctness, complacent.

Mmm .….!

Arrogant: making claims or pretensions to superior importance or rights, overbearingly assuming, insolently proud.

Again, Mmm …..!

Conceited: having an excessively favourable opinion of one’s abilities, appearance etc.

And again, Mmm …..!

I imagine that there are clergy who qualify under these definitions to be referred to as S, A or C, after all the clergy are recruited from the population at large, AKA the Laity, and amongst this disparate body some will be S or A or C.

But most of the clergy I actually know, or who I have worked with over the years, are neither S or A or C, instead they are hardworking and self effacing, putting the needs of others before their own needs and the needs of their families. As St Paul famously puts it:

‘Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in humility regard others as better than yourselves’.

Even Mr Bean?

It is a bit rich I must say to hear someone who has made a career out of pretending to be a clergyman criticise the profession he has caricatured.

It is also an irony that he has made far more money out of pretending to be a clergyman than he ever would have done if he had instead become one, always assuming that he had passed the selection process and not been rejected on the grounds that he was either S, A or C.

Funny people comedians…….