ONE of the most interesting aspects of a recent television series about the English Civil Wars was the revelation of just how pivotal a role religion played in people's lives in those days.

All things on Earth in the middle of the 17th Century - from the absence or prevalence of pestilence to the outcome of battles - were given a Divine dimension.

Some 350 years later, from the comfort of our centrally-heated sitting rooms, we gaze down the centuries with a casual detachment. This is telly-dinner history for consumers...

Organised and occasionally fanatical religion is once again making a big comeback in the world. Islam is undergoing a massive global revival for the third time in 3,000 years - and it would appear that some areas of Christianity are increasingly becoming more fundamentalist in nature.

Such developments may or may not be linked.

Anyway, the seemingly unstoppable increase in the flock of Woodgreen Evangelical Church on Hastings Drive, Warndon, is truly a Worcester phenomenon that deserves better than to be routinely dismissed by our secular sensibilities.

Indeed, such is the rapid growth of this church that one could be forgiven for thinking that here we have an echo, albeit much weaker, of 1st Century Palestine reverberating across the neatly trimmed front lawns of The Villages.

Perhaps. But I suspect that the growing number of converts is a mild backlash against our times.

It's not just because the world has become more dangerous since 9/11, or that the end of the Cold War has ushered in a new era of uncertainty. No. The reason Woodgreen is flourishing is that ordinary people are seeking an alternative to the ever-burgeoning squalor, vandalism, crime and casual cruelties of modern life.

People have turned to religion as they always have done when feeling powerless in the face of events. Just as they did in the Civil War.

Rap? It's just cr**

ACTOR Corin Redgrave has been reported as extolling the virtues of rap music.

He is quoted as comparing rap stars to mediaeval poets.

I had no idea this torch-bearer for one of Britain's greatest acting dynasties had such a sense of humour. Maybe he should be sussing out a comedy role for his next outing on the boards.

Let's be straight about this. Rap is racist, women-hating, violence-advocating mumbo-jumbo. It is utterly offensive drivel with no musical merit, whatsoever.

For years, Establishment figures have tried desperately to give rap some kind of credibility. Literary zealots have expended lakes of ink debating whether "smack your bitch up" is for real or supremely skilful irony.

And jazz musicians have toyed endlessly with the structure of rap's primitive parameters, presumably searching for the biggest thing since Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie created Be-Bop in the top room of Minton's back in 1944.

Sorry... nothin' clickin' chicken. Rap has next to no chord framework and is equally devoid of poesy. But, worst of all, it is awarded plaudits from people who should know better.

A case of the Emperor's New Clothes, methinks.

A shaggy cat story

I LOVE this notion of the Ankerdine Beast. Just think... in the wilds of Suckley is a creature that appears to be a cross between Father Christmas and the Hound of the Baskervilles.

How Royston Vasey is that?

I am reminded of a picture published in this newspaper a few years ago. It purported to show a black, cougar-shaped animal, passing through a stand of conifers at the bottom of a paddock on the outskirts of Worcester.

We printed this blurred snapshot in good faith. But later, it transpired the then-Editor had been hoodwinked. For the "cougar" was nothing more than a family cat. The "trees" were bushes, which exaggerated the beast's size.

How do I know? Well, a year or two after the picture was published, I met the couple who not only owned the land in question, but also a large black tomcat.

A neighbour had taken the photograph - and "somehow" it was sent to the paper as a genuine beast sighting.

On this occasion, truth was definitely not stranger than fiction.