Life is not a rehearsal, I have been told, but if you are religious then life is an audition. God is essentially giving us a short read-through of a script, seeing how we get on with it and then if we pass the test he has us killed and the reward is a part in an everlasting production called "Heaven". Don't think that failing the audition saves you from dying though. That will still happen, but then you get to be in a different show, "Hell".

So if the religious have it right then God is nothing more than a glorified Simon Cowell and I imagine that He treats prospective habitants of Heaven with the same kind of disdain as that pantomime villain.

To me it seems cruel to have such a long audition process, when it must be clear to God who is really going to get in and who isn't in about ten seconds, just as Simon Callow lets the really rubbish singers get well into their song so he can have a laugh at their expense. But it seems doubly cruel when God has also made the people he is judging and so their imperfections are his own fault.

Good luck with the audition process, even though I am pretty sure that all of you are going to fail. It's a rare audition too where offering to sleep with the person making the decision probably won't help things. Still I am prepared to give it a chance. It's my only hope.

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