One might argue that a viral video stops being viral when the programme it is promoting has to promote the video itself… Still, fun though.

I’ve been getting some very funny looks for the last hour…

Steve Punt, Hugh Dennis, John Holmes and occasionally Marcus Brigstocke provide satirical commentary on the week’s events, with musical entertainment from Mitch Benn.

Alas, it’s a couple of weeks too late, but the “Chanson de Zinedine Zidane” was inspired. If I get a chance, I’ll extract it from that week’s podcast and post it. You really should hear it.

It was by the Rev. Dr Giles Fraser, probably the Bishop of Somewhere*:

NASA have calculated the probability of a fatal accident on the latest Discovery space mission as 1 in 100. Imagine what it’s like to live with odds like that. The news that a small piece of protective tiling fell from the shuttle at its launch can only have increased the anxiety. Its not often explicitly mentioned, but it’s clearly there behind the chewed fingernails and ashen faces: the crew undertakes this journey in the full knowledge they are facing the possibility of their own death. It must take extraordinary courage to agree to such a mission.

But facing the reality of one’s own death isn’t just morbid fear – it can become something that transforms the very way we think about ourselves.

There’s a spiritual exercise I undertake every year I was taught by a Jesuit friend. I compose my own obituary. Writing up the life you hope to have really focuses the mind.

First drafts are often very stupid. Giles Fraser became the Archbishop of Canterbury, he married a Danish model and played football for Chelsea. That script quickly goes in the bin. And then you start to concentrate more. What is it I really want to be? What is important? What is it I want to do with my life? It’s an opportunity to think big and not be distracted by the petty projects that so commonly consume us.

And when you’ve written all this down, describing a life that you would be genuinely happy with, the next question is the real clincher. Are you going about your life in such a way that the story you have imagined for yourself is a real possibility? In other words, does what you want to be really connect up with who you are? It’s a devastating question that can change everything. After all, no one’s written the obituary for you. And so, asking yourself if you’re really going to become this person is simply facing the truth about who you really want to be.

Part of what makes the New Testament so focused a work of moral imagination is that it was written under the belief that the end of the world was drawing close. It was written with a huge sense of impending danger that created a form of concentration that burnt away the trivial. Facing the end puts all things into perspective.

When bombs went off in central London, my first thought was for the safety and whereabouts of my family. I was instantly reminded of what I really love and care for, what’s important. It’s all too easy to trundle through life without properly taking stock, focusing instead on domestic worries about the mortgage or the next promotion at work. Real danger can come as a wake up call for the unreflective life.

*Actually, it turns out that “Dr Giles Fraser is vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford” … and a jolly sensible chap.