This is Spectator Radio, the Spectator's curated podcast collection.

Welcome to Holy Smoke, the Spectator's Religion podcast. I'm Damien Thompson.

Why are bishops so boring?

It's the one thing everyone notices, but no one says in public.

But honestly, when did you last hear a bishop, Anglican or Catholic, utter a memorable thought?

Why do they speak in what I call bishopies, where we're always

gathered together in recognition of richness and diversity to celebrate our witness as a community

informed by good practice? If you hang around church circles, you hear an awful lot of this stuff. One bishop is indistinguishable from another, and to put it bluntly, they sound like David Brent's annoying older brother or sister. But unlike David Brent, they've made it. They've got miters and titles and sacramental powers that genuinely interesting clergy,

who never get made bishops, can only dream of. I'm joined by Harry Mount, Ezra of the Aldi,

an agnostic Anglican, a church crawler and a people watcher. Harry, do you know what I'm on about?

I certainly do, Damien, and I think the

perfect petri dish for this study is the Today program, and Thought for the Day, which I believe

you like me are not very keen on. And the moment Thought for the Day begins, particularly

if there's a bishop on, the intellectual

level of the discussion dips, and the boredom level spikes.

And I think that's for two reasons.

The intellectual level of bishops and clergy more widely has gone down vastly in the last 50 years.

And also, as you implied, the second reason, virtue signalling is perhaps the one main

destination of bishops and the clergy more widely.

Well, talking virtue signalling, I don't know I can do better than to quote Bishop

Sarah Malalley,

catapulted into the job of Bishop of London by Justin Welby,

...