Comment: holy sausage rollers

This story made me chuckle; the whole outrage about Greggs the pasty shop substituting a sausage roll for the baby Jesus in a navity scene. And I chose my capitalisation and spelling with irreverent, intentional care.

Some of the comment that followed I found quite insightful though, especially Peter Omerod's thoughts in the Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/.../christian-greggs-sausage-roll-jesus-bakery-chain

I personally feel it's still far too early in the year to be putting up Nativity Scenes anywhere, involving sausage rolls or not, but I guess I'll have to bow to the inevitable. Halloween is out of the way, Christmas is as good as here. However, good on Greggs for scoring a double publicity win with a single PR stunt. It's certainly had me thinking about the convenience pastry chain store significantly more this week than I normally think about them.

Which is to say I probably thought about them twice. Three times, if you include my writing this comment.

Much as I enjoyed Mr Omerod's musings, one in particular made me chuckle:

"The fact that it’s funny tells us just how potent some of these key aspects of Christian iconography remain. A picture in which a sausage roll replaced, say, Alan Titchmarsh, wouldn’t have nearly the same effect."

I don't necessarily agree. We played a gig once, many years ago, for the Mess at RAF Brize Norton (a local airbase). It was packed, very lively, with a very good-natured, "work hard play hard" and exceptionally drunken, boisterous crowd. Really good fun. And one of the few gigs I've played where the bouncers had guns and combat boots.

At one point, they kidnapped our keyboard player from the stage and replaced him with a lilo.

They found it hilarious. As did we. Not so sure Jim (said keyboardist) was as comfortable with the joke, but it goes to support my own view that almost any ridiculous substitution is generally grounds for hilarity.

Besides, substituting a sausage roll into any pastiche involving Alan Titchmarch can surely only ever be a step in a positive direction in terms of increasing the interest and engagement of said picture?