the green green wife-beating of home

All this food and booze and books nonsense is all very well, you're saying, but what about the real issues? Like, for instance, what's Stephen Green and his rent-a-loon religious fundamentalist pals at Christian Voice up to these days?

Well, you'll perhaps remember that Christian Voice popped up to offer their unique critical perspective on Bill Bailey's comedy show a couple of months ago. It seems that they (in the person of, inevitably, Stephen Green) were also wheeled in to offer a view on Elton John's new baby when the BBC reported on the story just after Christmas. You can imagine how that went - Green being not overly enamoured of the gays, and by "not overly enamoured" I do of course mean firmly in favour of murdering them. When it was pointed out that they should therefore be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, the BBC resorted to the usual nonsense argument about providing "balance" and "debate".

So it's with a warm glow of outrage after that that I note this story in the Daily Mail a week or so ago, apparently based on a series of interviews with Green's ex-wife (they divorced in 2006), and detailing the usual nasty creepy authoritarianism plus some rather more spicy wife-beating action. I know, evil deranged bigot in public life equals not particularly nice bloke in private life is hardly revolutionary news, but it gives me a rosy glow of schadenfreude all the same. Still, I expect he went to confession afterwards, so it's all OK. I would also like it noted that I made the obvious and well-documented link between fanatical homophobia and deep, deep closeting here, just so that you can refer back to it when the other tabloid stories eventually come out. You know the ones I mean.