Matthew Norman's Media Diary

Looking down on the captivating, religion-fuelled battle that is Hitchens v Hitchens, the Lord God must wonder if he's seen the like since Jesus and Lucifer had their own spat in the desert.

It hasn't quite been 40 days and 40 nights with the godless Christopher and the endearingly pious Peter, although perhaps it's beginning to feel that way after a week of warfare inspired by the former's book on the horrors of faith and the latter's trenchant review of it. It would be stretching things to say the boys were unavoidable (they cropped up very briefly on Wednesday's Countdown, before being led away from Dictionary Corner by security over reciprocal hair-pulling), but not by much.

My favourite effort was the joint appearance on Question Time (did anyone else hear David Dimbleby whisper to Chris at one point: "Mate, I've got an inferiority complex-driven younger brother too. You have my sympathies"). This has already inspired a new parlour game, Which Hitch?, in which fans debate which brother they like best while the port, much like the two ex-Trots themselves, makes its journey from left to right. I, having shared one meal with both, find it a very tough call.

Then again, picking between a man who sticks to mineral water (Peter, oddly enough) and another whose initial drinks order was "I'll have a triple Scotch on the rocks and a bottle of red wine chaser" is never going to be easy. At some point this psychodrama, seemingly rooted in who was their late mother's favourite, may begin to stale. And so, for catharsis, I propose the revival of charity celebrity boxing (you will recall Ricky Gervais's controversial split decision over Grant Bovey a while ago). If Peter wins, they're definitely is a God, no more questions asked. If Chris triumphs, we are indeed alone in a random and meaningless universe. Either way, they hug. Also, that way we're guaranteed 12 minutes of airtime in which neither one of them speaks.

* An alternative solution would be for the Hitchens boys to appear on ITV1's Kyle's Academy, in which the psychotherapist Derek Draper joins some sub-sub-sub-Jerry Springer type to oversee the treatment of people with troubled relationships. Strangely, there seems to be a feeling out there that Derek is tarnishing his trade by doing this, so let me make it quite clear that he is not some fly-boy media tart. This is a serious person who, after leaving Peter Mandelson's employ, went into business selling New Age crystals. There will always be sneerers questioning the motives of those more altruistic than themselves, but there is nothing demeaning, to psychotherapy or anything else, about enticing sad and even faintly deranged people into sharing their problems for the entertainment of a daytime ITV audience.

* A disappointing week for fans of The Secret Blog of a TV Controller, the daily diary purporting to be written by new BBC3 controller Danny Cohen, but is in fact produced by a Craig Brown manqué whose identity remains, at the time of writing, unknown. Not only have no new overtly anti-Semitic entries appeared since we touched on this last week, but so far as I can tell from ploughing through this stuff – and it just gets funnier and funnier, it's the most amusement I've had since being administered a penile swab by a sadistic Aberdonian nurse at the Charing Cross hospital in May, 1992 – a couple of entries have been removed. So, it seems, has a joke about black people's genitalia.

* I am pleased to see Nicky Campbell's name linked with the Crimewatch berth from which Nick Ross has been removed, supposedly on grounds of age. On the Newsnight Principle he established some years ago, Nicky traditionally rejects these jobs shortly before not quite being offered them. In fact he was overheard last week telling the R5 traffic man that, although he himself had felt obliged to disappoint Gordon on family grounds (relatives were top IRA men, according to his book on the matter), he couldn't see why Paddy Ashdown wouldn't take the post at Northern Ireland. So unless he has ruled himself out of Crimewatch by Wednesday, there may well be something in it.

* As for those of you who have made the postbag bulge since news of Mr Ross's removal broke, let me reassure you. Huw Edwards is absolutely safe as presenter, chief reporter, scriptwriter, editor, producer, director and scene shifter on BBC1's 10 O'Clock News. Huw is on his travels again, last week to Afghanistan; but no blog this time, like the recent one from Iraq about the ghastliness of the toilets in his tent. He is not pushing 60, as some of you appear to believe. Huw is in fact 46.

* Hats off to Andrew Marr for his outstanding five part series on post-war Britain. If there is one quibble, I don't think Andrew managed to get his face in as many shots, or to travel to enough exotic foreign locations to illustrate his narrative, as we'd have liked. As for his closing remark about what an amazing stroke of luck it remains to be born British, well, with the BBC getting its bloomers in a twist about that "left liberal bias" (and how long will it take them to recover a bit of self-confidence after the Hutton calamity? They must find this endless cringing rather exhausting) a little jingoism from Andrew was beautifully timed.