Letter: Alleluia - six!

"BULLSHIT BINGO" may not be quite the innovation you suggest ("Movers and shakers in a bingo win-win situation", 7 November). When I first joined a church choir at the age of seven or eight, we played Sermon Cricket every Sunday. The rules were simple. The side of the choir that was "in" scored one run for every mention of God the Father, or of Jesus, and (although this is poor theology, of course) four for a mention of the Holy Ghost. If the vicar used the word "Alleluia!", we scored a six. The "batting" side continued to be in until the words "sin", "the devil", or "hell" were mentioned, when the scoring passed to the other side. The winner was the side with the highest number of runs at the end of the sermon.

Our activity was largely tolerated since it kept small choirboys reasonably quiet - although during one exciting match, a stifled cry of "Owzat!" rang out during a meaningful pause in a closely argued sermon and was met by severe rebuke and a fine after the service.

Sermon Cricket also had the merit, I suppose, of keeping our attention on the sermon and thereby helping us to learn more than we might otherwise have done from the often impressively dull if well-wrought sermons of the time. Bullshit Bingo, for all its failings, may have the same effect on executives at tedious board meetings.

THE REV DAVID CHANTREY

Beckbury, Shropshire