If you were in hospital, what’s the least appealing behaviour you’d expect from the nursing staff?

(OK, I should rephrase that. The “least appealing” thing after “threats to your continued existence” or “carrying out painful and frightening medical interventions.” )

Anyway the answer to the lead rhetorical question was “behaving like a doorstep evangelist.”

Which is what this nurse did. She got suspended from work for it, but was then reinstated.

I’ve linked to the Times story, out of the many links that I could have put here, because it has a photo of the nurse which would win an undisputed Gold in the Semiotic Olympics. (I defy you to look at it without sniggering. If ever a portrait expressed the sitter’s personality on so many levels, this is it.)

Last week Mrs Petrie, who was supported by the Christian Legal Centre, was summoned to a disciplinary hearing on the basis that she had failed to demonstrate a “personal and professional commitment to equality and diversity” by offering her prayers.

Let me refresh your memory. This nurse bothered people with unsolicited offers of prayer, at a time when they were physically at the mercy of her goodwill. How irritating, even distressing, would that be? Imagine being seriously ill and feeling that you had to politely humour a god-botherer – who was, incidentally, getting paid to attend to YOUR needs rather than her own need to proselytise,

Sir Patrick Cormack, the Tory MP for South Staffordshire and a committed Anglican, told Parliament that the case illustrated the “utter absurdities” of political correctness.

Well, “political correctness” had to have gone mad somewhere in this tale, or we might begin to suspect that the “anti-PC brigade” weren’t even trying. Although, I admit that “utter absurdities” makes a refreshing change from the cliched “gone mad.”

Anyway, the Christian Legal Centre, don’t you just love them? They are like a Superman figure to defending people who somehow skipped the Sermon on the Mount stuff and define their “Christian faith” in terms of jewelry, opposition to statues, homophobia and freedom to push their own beliefs onto other people.

Their biggest moment in the spotlight was their failed blasphemy case against Jerry Springer the Opera.

(Which reminds me that the usually-hilariously-funny Stewart Lee co-producer of the Jerry Springer the Opera show has a new series starting on BBC on 18 March.)

A Channel 4 documentary last year showed Christian Voice and their fundy -funded chums in their true horror. It also did the world a major service by showing the incident in which Steven “Birdshit” Green earned his nickname. I mean, if that wasn’t a message from above, I don’t know what is.