It's been a long mission of subterfuge and intrigue but finally at the Bloomsbury Humanist gig tonight all the hard work paid off and I was able to finally put my plan into action. For a quarter of a century I have been pretending to be an atheist, doing scurrilous, even blasphemous routines to lull the real atheists into a false sense of security. But it's all been a clever ruse. I am a Christian and Jesus is God. Just think about it for a second, it's obvious. No, think a bit harder. There, you got it.
That's right, I've always believed in Jesus. I bet the people who picketed my Christ on a Bike show feel a bit stupid now. We're on the same side, you numbskulls! It's all right, I forgive you. That's part of the deal right? Though I was a bit disappointed that you didn't forgive me for what I was pretending to think. I think once we get to Heaven Jesus and his dad are going to make you lot feel pretty stupid. Especially when they're crowning me as Best Christian Ever (after Jesus who is obviously best). But I won't be feeling pride or superiority over the rest of you because that's unChristian. I will humbly take the crown (and accompanying T-shirt) and just wear them around Heaven, not drawing attention to them and if anyone brings up my accolade I will just say, "I was just doing Christ's work. I didn't care about the crown or the T-shirt or the eternity in paradise. Just helping other people is reward enough for me. And look we're all in Heaven, so we must be equally good, right? A crown and a T-shirt don't make me special."
The thing is that it's all very well going to a church and preaching religion to people who are already religious, but what good does that do. You need to get the good news to the people who aren't religious, to the idiots who think that there definitely is no God and that they can prove that using facts and logic. But God isn't interested in those things. He's interested in judging people on a set of poorly defined parameters that change a bit depending on who you're talking to, even though he created us to want to do the sins that He will punish us for. As is His right.
It was my duty to save the souls of these fucking morons, but I realised that standing outside their theatres and shouting at them would just annoy them and probably make them more certain of their wrong idiocy. What I needed to do was infiltrate them, win their trust, pretend to be one of them and then BANG when there were about 550 of them all together in one room, hit them with the TRUTH. And refuse to get off stage until they all agreed I was right.
It's been hard, of course it has, to come up with 25 years worth of material about how wrong religion is, when it is obviously right (and when I say religion, of course I mean my religion, all the other ones are clearly wrong and so are many people who believe in the same basic God as me but have different interpretations of what He meant). If you were wondering why the stuff I was doing wasn't very funny, it's because THERE IS NOTHING FUNNY ABOUT MOCKING GOD.
Anyway tonight I came out and revealed the subterfuge and instead of doing my routine about where men have put their penises for fun (and consequently booked themselves a place in HELL) I delivered an hour long sermon about Jesus and why he is real and how everyone should believe in Him. And though the audience laughed to begin with, thinking I was being "ironic" and then booed me and then began smashing up the seats (the joke's on them, breaking furniture is just the kind of thing Jesus would do - not so wrong now is He?), eventually they did all see that I was right and became Christians and Robin Ince agreed that all science was wrong and that the remaining gigs would be a celebration of Christ. So that all worked out very well.
In fact strangely enough in the end all the "atheists" admitted that they were in fact also Christ-spies and had also been pretending not to believe in Jesus so that they could choose their moment to convert all the other atheists. There wasn't a single atheist there. In fact I am not sure there are any anywhere. Just loads of super committed Christians prepared to do anything in order to help their fellow man. We all felt a bit silly in the end, but then hugged and sang a hymn and worshipped a 2012 year old baby. It was beautiful.
The worst thing about my quarter of a century of a mole for Jesus was having to live a sinful life in order not to give myself away. Having all that sex and booze and gambling and ox-coveting was terrible for me. But I had told Jesus what I was doing and He didn't tell me to stop so I am assuming He understood and approved of it. I imagine He was standing in the corner of the room, watching me, putting his thumbs up (not up anything in the room, just up, He only likes to watch). Thanks for understanding Jesus. I didn't enjoy any of it, but I did enjoy the fact that what I was doing made you happy. Now I know that all the people I was sinning with were also just pretending to sin to please Jesus I feel a bit weird and am wondering why Jesus didn't somehow put an end to it all or give us a sign that there was actually no need to behave in this way. Just a little embarrassed cough would have done. It's almost like Jesus gets off on watching two Christians pretending to be sinners in order to eventually convert each other even though there's no actual need. But there must be another explanation.
Anyway, quite a night.
I've just realised I've posted this a day early. All that stuff is what I am doing at the Monday night gig. Tonight I carried on the pretence and did my knob jokes, but I wore a Christmas jumper as a subtle clue. And the audience gave the jumper a big cheer, proving that they love Christmas and Jesus (and a reindeer) really. Embarrassingly Michael Legge (always keen to copy everything I do) had turned up in a similar, but inferior jumper). I took a photo of Alexei Sayle chatting to Stewart Lee. Two comedy legends! I am referring to myself and Alexei there of course.
I think Stewart Lee might have gone insane. His act tonight consisted of putting on a Mexican wrestler's mask, draping it in bacon and then doing some of his old jokes in a Canadian accent. It's terrible when a comedian in his mid-40s loses it and starts thinking something like that might be amusing. What if I started draping myself in raw meat when I played snooker against myself? People would think I'd gone crazy.
I am of course silently outraged that my snooker podcasts did not even get a mention on Sports Personality of the Year, but there is an old saying, "A self-playing snooker player is never recognised in his own life-time. Or indeed at any point after that." Well let's see if that saying is right.
Jesus is real!
