Small Gods begins tonight on Radio 4. After my bedtime, unfortunately, but who cares? Radio 4 now has a “Listen Again” feature on the website, so? listen to? it at your leisure. I may even see about downloading it onto Darling Wifey’s iPod and pinching that, too.

So what’s so clever about Small Gods, then? Apart from it being classic Pratchett?

Well, on Discworld, gods need people more than people need gods – and as any student of english-language popular theology will doubtless know, this is exactly how sectarian Christians like their deities. (The difference between a sect and a church is subtle: both believe in what they think is the truth, it’s just that the sect thinks it has the exclusive global and universal rights to it. Who is going to? deliver the truth, show us the way? and set the gods free?)

Then there’s the philosophy which, frankly, if you think is even remotely silly then you have taken everything far too seriously and need to go and lie down for a while.

A number of religions? on the Discworld? still? practice human sacrifice,? except they don’t really need to? practice it any more? as they have become very good at it indeed. But then they have a? direct approach to religion on the Discworld. As they say there, build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for a day. Set him on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

The question I have for essayists is this: am I the only one who takes Pratchett seriously as a satirist?