the new BBC news Presenter Dan Walker is also Pious, however He higher no longer Be Po-faced Too

It’s his non-public possibility, and whereas it may have resulted in just a few misplaced alternatives when he was a football presenter, it unquestionably hasn’t had a deleterious effect on his lengthy-term occupation.

anyone who’s ever seen Chariots of fireside will recognise the dramatic arc. back in 1924, Eric Liddle memorably wouldn’t run his 100-metre Olympic warmth on the Sabbath, despite the power. instead, he ran the four hundred metres, an awfully completely different self-discipline, and received gold, even though whether or not with the aid of dint of skill or deux ex machina, I couldn’t say.

taking on from enjoyably irascible invoice Turnbull, who’s leaving BBC Breakfast after 15 years, definitely counts as television gold for Walker, who hosts soccer focus on BBC One.

The BBC’s bill Turnbull had his fellow presenters in ‘tears’ as he introduced his departure from the Breakfast couch  picture: PA Archive/PA images

but God in point of fact does work in mysterious methods as a result of he’s a Creationist. Yup, a type of. The irony is that his appointment came the self-comparable day that we discovered that US physicists had proven the theoretical existence of Albert Einstein’s gravitational waves.

Let’s say a prayer that, when he starts his new job, Walker leaves his guide of Genesis at home and producers leave science news to Minchin.

honestly, I’d never heard of him before now, however from his squeaky clean images within the papers, he appears as affable as Radio 2’s Aled Jones (a Christian who does work on a Sunday).

but my actual misgivings centre on the ominous descriptions of Walker as “devout”.

It’s such an dreary word, so redolent of earnest humourlessness. Of this, i have first-hand expertise. I was a priggishly pious Catholic rising up.

Dan Walker has been criticised for his creationist views.

I had a preoccupation with martyred saints, the fires of Hell, and take into account weeping inconsolably one Sunday when the clocks went ahead and we ignored Mass.

Worse, the nuns once discovered me washing the ft of a Madonna statue with my tears and drying them with my hair. The priest told my mom I used to be affected by “scruples”, which, listening at the door, i believed was the identical as shingles and a punishment for my sins. I must have been six years of age.

After a hiatus between my early twenties and mid-thirties, I nonetheless go to church a week, but I’d be totally appalled if any individual have been to suggest that I’m devout. I’m extra of a “practising” Catholic, despite the fact that, in contrast to the piano, i will be able to’t say my talents are improving noticeably over time.

typically talking, the difficulty with religious people is that they take now not just their God but themselves terribly severely, making them dispiritingly po-faced.

There are, of course, honourable exceptions: Pope Francis, Rabbi Lionel Blue, the wickedly funny Egyptian satirist Bassem Youssef, who never criticises Islam but mercilessly pillories people who harness its teachings in the service of fascism.

Pope Francis has by no means been a po-confronted leader.  photograph: Rex options

but it surely’s no coincidence that these priding themselves on their piety have a tendency to score low for tolerance and indubitably convey (if no longer in reality really feel) a undeniable purse-lipped judgmentalism in their dealings with others.

I’d very very similar to to assume that although Walker is known as religious, it’s not essentially an outline he would use of himself. Let’s hope no longer, as a result of aside from impeccable presentation abilities, all we ask for after we swap television on first thing of a morning is affable just right humour.

conversing of which let me depart you with a shaggy dog story, poking mild fun on the Western Isles, a dour stronghold of religious Scottish Presbyterianism.

Why does the Minister on Lewis ban the congregation from having sex on a Sunday? because it might result in dancing.