One of the silliest examples of the current mania for retrospectively saying sorry to groups of people we have wronged down the ages must surely be the Church of England’s recent apology to Charles Darwin and his followers.

The inherent pointlessness of such exercises becomes apparent after only a cursory glimpse of the history books. How far do we go with this? Dear present-day Egyptian government, so sorry for parting the Red Sea and drowning your army three thousand years ago, best wishes from the Israelis… Let’s face it, the Anglican Church has got enough problems without hand-wringing about events over which it can no longer exert influence.

In any event, I have thought for some time that the biggest hurdle the organisation faces is over its essential invisibility as far as the average person is concerned.

Personally, I’d like to see the present Bishop of Worcester have a more public face.

For example, how many Worcester people would recognise the current bishop if they saw him waiting in the queue at the chip shop?

Very few, I would suspect. It’s time we had a bit more John Wesley and a little less Vatican.