I make no apology for turning to the serious business of Hell and

I make no apology for turning to the serious business of Hell and Damnation in my column today. I trust it will be a welcome release from the unswerving frivolity of my surrounding columnists.And topical, too: you may have noticed that both Hell and its po-faced cousin Damnation have been in the news this week, after a special report, “The Mystery of Salvation” from the Doctrine Commission of the Church of England concluded that, after all, Hell does indeed exist, though perhaps not in quite the thoroughly disagreeable form promised by Revelations, ie it is less entirely “flambee” than humid and a little stuffy.I am myself the Chairman of the Doctrine Commission – it was I, you will remember who, in the controversial pamphlet “Silence in the Church!” revealed that Jesus made not a single mention of the word “tambourine” in the entire New Testament – so perhaps I might paint a pen-portrait of our proceedings.”Gentlemen,” I began, “we now come to the vexed question of Hell. Indeed, it seems only a few months ago that I found myself reading from Revelation, Chapter 21 verse 8, and doughty words they were too:”But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.”Strong stuff, eh? Needless to say, one is more than used to the Snug Bar of the Garrick on a Friday night, but even that seems mild in comparison. From time to time, the vicar goes down on bended knee and asks me to apply my beautiful, privately-educated voice to the reading of the Lesson. I refuse, incidentally, to subscribe to the News of the World on any day other than Sunday, when I find it amuses the more childish of my weekend guests. Occasionally, I might permit myself a glance at it, particularly if one of my Conservative colleagues has been caught with his trousers down – purely so that I might offer him my most detailed sympathies, you understand.
And so to the main business of the day, which is, of course, Sunday worship. As a leading Lay member of the Entertainments Division of the General Synod of the Church of England, I attend services at my local church every sixth or seventh Sunday, weather permitting.

These schools will occasionally be visited by Her Majesty’s Inspectors, and the teachers denounced for failure Otherwise, they will be conveniently forgotten.. HEAVEN knows how you spend your Sunday, but I suggest in future that you spend it as I spend mine. After a hearty breaking of my fast – two fried eggs, six rashers of pig, three of Mr Walls’s finest sausages (nothing beats the Great British Banger for sheer guts), a goodly slice of fried bread and a thick slice or two of Black Pudding – I insist on personally making the walk to the front door for the Sunday newspapers, so as to stay in trim. Somebody still has to educate the deprived and disruptive but, with luck, they will be confined to schools where they need not trouble the children of potential Tory voters. Interviews, as everybody knows, are just a form of social selection. (The official version, that schools will be looking for pupil “motivation” and parental “support”, amounts to the same thing.) They will allow more middle-class parents to get into “good” schools – which are always the schools with the best exam results – and thus displace less privileged children.

The eleven-plus at least had the merit of allowing a smattering of rough, but bright, children to get into the elite grammar schools. The grammar schools, selecting the top 20 or 25 per cent for a privileged education, entailed branding all the others as failures and dumping them in the secondary moderns. By the 1960s, it was plain that no middle-class parent and no aspirant working-class parent could abide their child being put in thelatter category.So the Tories are left fiddling around with the comprehensive system in an attempt to ensure that their middle-class supporters get an even better deal from it than they already do. And successful schools do not want to expand; they know that opening their doors wider would simply dilute their quality. The only solution, therefore, is to strengthen selection and to rig the rules in favour of the middle classes.John Major, it is well known, would like a return to the grammar schools which, along with cream-and-chocolate-coloured train carriages, he remembers from the 1950s of his childhood He won’t get them. Last year, a record 46,000 parents appealed against offers of places; only 13,000 won.