The Life of Brian

Are we the only people who have spotted the irony of the Head of Religion and Ethics at the BBC saying that the nation has become so irreligious that we would not understand the jokes in Monty Python's Life of Brian? It’s no laughing matter: Britain has become a nation of religious illiterates 'who are baffled by Biblical references in Monty Python film The Life of Brian'

There was a great fuss when the film came out which culminated in one of the great television debates of the age when Cleese and Palin met Muggeridge and Stockwood. Muggeridge and Stockwood vs Cleese and Palin

The idea that we should learn about religion to understand the jokes in a film which was condemned by leading churchmen when it came out, rather than for any moral improvement has a special educational charm.

And if we have to learn about religion to understand the jokes then what about Romans go Home? Come on you Latin teachers, join the fight.  Only someone with a grounding in Latin - preferably from Kennedy's First Eating (sic) Primer, but from the Cambridge Latin Course if you are younger - would begin to understand the scene. Surely this is a reason to learn Latin as well as RE 'so that we can understand the jokes in the film.'

How times change; or Tempora mutantur as Latinists might say. Definitely one for the Vicar of Bray.