WHAT in God's name do they think they're doing?

First they saw off the ungodly John Kerry, so ensuring George W Bush was installed as US president.

Now American fundamentalist Christians have turned their wrath on a new target: North Yorkshire clergymen turned bestselling author Graham Taylor.

Far-right Christian group Focus On The Family have used their website www.pluggedinonline.com to accuse the former vicar's second book, Wormwood, of being "vile" and of serving as a "doorway to a deeper and spiritually unhealthy fascination with mysticism and witchcraft".

It's left our Graham feeling a bit confused and hurt, since he thought his books carried a deeply Christian message. "The LA Times said I was the new CS Lewis - and the next thing is I get this fundamentalist right-wing group saying I'm a blazing anti-Christ," the former vicar of Cloughton says.

Graham, however, is not one to turn the other cheek - as you'd expect of a burly former policeman. Instead, he has come out all guns blazing.

Friends Of The Family rang him up for an interview - and before they could put the phone down he let them have it with both barrels. "I said you're nothing but spiritual fascists, members of the thought police," he told the Diary. "Their attitude seems to be 'if you don't think what we're thinking then you're wrong.

"Your not allowed to think off the party line. It is a very, very narrow and judgmental way of thinking - everything that Jesus was not."

Whatever happened to turning the other cheek?

A WORD of reassurance. It is the Diary's solemn pledge that in the forthcoming week you will read nothing about the following:

Dancing newsreaders, EastEnders stars "hilariously" sending themselves up, Gaby Flamin' Roslin, cloned pop acts shamelessly plugging their latest single in the name of charity, Derek from Doncaster sitting in a bath of beans, men shaving off various bits of their body hair, "please call now", highly-paid executives handing over outsize cheques which add up to a morning's profit for their giant corporations, stories of sick children with sentimental voiceovers, that stupid one-eyed bear, Wogan, a stilted "comedy" routine from the Osbornes, local telly presenters interviewing drunken adults dressed as schoolgirls, or a night of dumbed-down TV amateurism justified because "it's all in a good cause". Good luck to the folk involved with Ch*ldr*n *n N**d. Just don't inflict your cloying, "I'm mad, me" infantilism on those of us who choose not to jettison our critical faculties.

THE debate we started last week over what is the worst song ever recorded rumbles on. Naturally enough, those publicity-crazed Osbaldwick newts wanted to get in on the act.

So here is Newton and Ridley's nomination: "Could it be the drug-induced, psychedelic lyrics of the 1967 classic Moody Blues song Newts In White Satin?"

THE Cheltenham and Gloucester Building Society has sent us a 2005 pocket diary. Thanks guys.

But why does it include a map of the London Underground on the back cover? What use is that to someone living in York? Or Cheltenham or Gloucester, for that matter?

If someone would kindly oblige by printing a diary bearing the main York bus routes, we shall be delighted to buy some and send them to all our acquaintances in London.

Updated: 09:34 Monday, November 15, 2004