Alive and well and sharing a flat with Salman Rushdie

I’ve just seen an advert describing Lee Evans as the Elvis of comedy.

I saw the same thing said about Bernard Manning after he died. Which I thought was ridiculous. Fair enough, he was a fat clapped-out has-been: but he wasn’t a junkie.

Then when Michael Jackson died, people were comparing him to Elvis Presley, too. “Outrageous dance moves,” they said of Jackson, or it may have been Presley. “White man with the voice of a black man,” they said of Presley, or possibly Jackson.

Still, at least in Jackson’s case we are comparing like with like. But comparing Lee Evans to Presley? What next? Stephen Hawking – the Napoleon of astrophysics. Bernard Matthews – the Gabriel Garcia Marquez of turkey farming. Moses – the Ronnie O’Sullivan of Jewish lawmaking.

Even within a field, I’m not sure of the value of this kind of comparison. For twenty years after his retirement, English cricket looked in vain for “the next Ian Botham”. Any youngster who could bowl a bit and bat a bit was laden with near-messianic expectations.

(India seems to do this differently. Tendulkar is so revered – indeed, worshipped – that they specifically do not look for anyone like him to appear. Instead, a promising young batsman will be spoken of as potentially “the next Dravid” or “the next Laxman”. It is taken for granted that there will not be another Tendulkar.)

Did I say “messianic” just now? Jesus (unlike Elvis) has promised that He will return: but neither has been seen on earth recently. And in both cases, some folks have difficulty with this. And so sects grow, investing messianic hope in a living individual. I don't envy that person. If it is hard to be touted as the next JK Rowling, how much harder to be hoped on as the returning Christ.

Of course, if the man the Moonies look to turns out not to be Jesus, after all – well, it won’t be the end of the world.