Chris Titley

The Church of England issued a cry for attention yesterday. Unfortunately, it was drowned out by 40,000 football fans and a referee's whistle.

The Reverend Keith Sinclair meant well. He runs the church next door to Aston Villa's ground, and wanted to protest about the Villa-Chelsea fixture being played at 11.30 on a Sunday morning. Suddenly divine inspiration struck the clergyman: a mass bell ringing will do the trick! Nothing annoys like noise.

And no doubt it did annoy hard working Brummies hoping to enjoy a peaceful weekend. But the impact inside the ground must have been minimal.

Football supporters are not known as a silent, contemplative bunch. They are given to screaming abuse at, and vowing undying devotion to, the same players in alternate breaths. If they noticed the peal at all - at half chime, perhaps? - the Villa fans might have grimly considered it a toll for their late, lamented championship hopes.

And the protest would have made no difference at all to the players. The only bells most footballers are interested in is 40 per cent proof.

Nonetheless, Mr Sinclair was sure that his ding dong would be heard on high - if not by God, then by Sky TV. As one who has resisted the cheap charms of the Murdoch broadcasting corporation, I cannot say whether the protest was audible to home viewers. But a tweak or two of the microphones could have cut out the interference.

It seems that the reverend and his team were going like the clappers for no good reason. All that sound and fury added up to was the sound of a huge clanger being dropped. If the Church had wanted to prove its irrelevance to most people, this was the way to go about it. Only a minority of the British population are active Anglicans.

Our national game, meanwhile, is more of a religion than the real thing. It inspires passion, faith and even worship of its own idols. More Chelsea fans than churchgoers would have fumed about the Sunday morning kick off.

Sundays mean many things to many people, but they are certainly not the exclusive province of the Church of England any more. Thank goodness. During my childhood, weekend enjoyment was stifled by an overbearing respect for this distant faith. Everything was shut. Nothing was on the telly.

Now, thanks largely to the failure of the Keep Sundays Special campaign, Sundays are much more fun. Those of us who do not go to Church can go for a drink, to the shops - even to a football match. Amen to that.

Any hopes that the successful Anglo-Swiss round-the-world balloon trip will bring an end to pointless record-breaking attempts are forlorn, I'm afraid. There are still too many so-called explorers wanting to stretch themselves - and our patience - to the limit.

All that those relentless balloon trips inspired is a question: why? It was the last, great aeronautical challenge, we were told. But that is only because we invented the aeroplane.

Meanwhile, David Hempleman-Adams' trudge through the snow came to an abrupt end after nine days. He was attempting to become the first person to walk to the geomagnetic North Pole unaided. If he had triumphed, what next? Perhaps Mr Hempleman-Adams could have become the first man to do the journey on a space hopper.

The trouble for modern-day adventurers is that most of the globe has been conquered. When live pictures of the wreck of the Titanic resting on the ocean bottom are beamed into our living rooms, we become a hard lot to impress. There are few examples of derring-do that we do not pooh-pooh.

I am happy for any individual to risk his life pirouetting across the Sahara in wellington boots, as long as he doesn't seek publicity for his daftness. And if there are still firms seeking to sponsor futile escapades, there is always the English cricket team.

22/03/99

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.