I went to a Church of England junior school when nothing in the world was multi-anything, including culture, and it was built to last a lifetime. English life was filmed in black and white and had a harmonica soundtrack. We all looked like Just William and walked the two miles to the Victorian brick school, happily throwing stones at the limbless ex-servicemen selling matches and touching chimney sweeps for luck.

There were two Jewish children at the school; we knew they were Jewish because they weren’t allowed into assembly where we sang All Things Bright and Beautiful — the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, the Jew charging interest and foreclosing his estate.

If the headmaster had said, “Okay, someone killed baby Jesus and we’re all going to sit here until I find out why,” we’d have handed them in. “It was the Jews, sir. They’ve got the nails in their pockets. One of them’s hiding in the attic.”

Even then, as I said my prayers at the end of the day that finished with “God bless the little boys and girls not as lucky as me”, I knew there was something not quite kosher about this exclusion. Religious education is an oxymoron, it’s a wicked thing. Not simply in the laughable sense of denying Darwin or the hours devoted to rote-learning holy books, but it’s the belief that there is one set of facts for us and another for the rest of you.

Seeing the pusillanimous Alan Johnson cave in to Catholic bishops wasn’t just cringingly depressing, it was a derogation of the business of government to create and maintain an equitable open state for everyone.

What is it that Catholic kids need to get taught that the rest of us can’t be told? What’s so delicate about their faith that it can’t go to school with everyone else? And anyway, we seem to be missing the real victims here.

It isn’t the secular community that’s being barred (unless of course they’re special needs and can be charitably picky), it’s the poor kids who get accepted for the full benefit of the weird cruelty, fear, guilt and twisted sensuality that are the defining characteristics of a really thorough Christian education.

It’s not a coincidence that your local Waterstone’s has sections devoted to the memoirs of people abused in religious schools. I expect the church would say that there are so many best-selling books of Catholic misery was proof of the soundness of their education. The Catholic church’s record on care for children is worse than any Pakistani madras or, indeed, most borstals.

I know that the children who were most corrupted by my mild C of E junior school were not the Jewish lads who were made to feel different but the rest of us who were shown that they really were different.

I suppose a Dan Brown-ish conspiracy that points out that the prime minister’s children went to a state-aided Catholic school is too obvious to be believable?

• My, isn’t Billy Banks-Blaney a good-looking boy? What a handsome fellow and such a cheeky little interior decorator’s smile! You can see why the Tory shadow environment minister Greg Barker skipped off with him. We can only wish them every happiness.

  Finding love is a difficult and rare thing though I suspect not as rare and difficult as they’ll find choosing sheets and curtains. Of course, we should also feel for his wife. Perhaps the best we can do is draw a veil and leave her to her own life; she’s not a public figure and is no longer attached to one. Unlike Mrs Mark Oaten who has just taken off the rubber gloves from hosing down her own wandering husband to dash off a sisterly advice column of Victorian pity. What is it with the discarded and humiliated wives’ club that they feel the need to dabble in other women’s unhappiness?

  Robin Cook’s first wife was barely out of other people’s dirty laundry, and though she was more sinning than sinned against, Edwina Currie always seemed to have the saccharin balm of a helpful hint. You feel for the political wife who discovers that her husband is having an affair with the Household Cavalry, the kids are being teased at school, the house is being besieged by paparazzi and just when she knows it can’t get any worse there’s Heather Mills writing her an open letter of loving advice and encouragement in the Daily Mail.()

  It's all a bit hard to swallow

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