So glad he enjoyed his night on the toot

"Where's it from?"

"Waddya mean?"

"What's its diocese?"

"Well, it looked a bit Bath and Wells-ish to me . . ."

Further speculation was rendered unnecessary at this point when the bishop in the Mercedes spoke.

"I am the Bishop of Southwark, and this is what I do."

Time for the Church Police to be called - to sort out not only the Bishop in the Merc, but some earlier arrivals. "I've got three of 'em down by the bin," says Mum, "and the dustmen won't touch 'em."

Sirens are heard racing up, followed by a tremendous crash as the door bursts open. The leading detective speaks: "What's all this then, Amen!"

"There's another dead drunk bishop in the car, Vicar Sergeant."

"Detective Parson, madam. I see . . . suffragan or diocesan?"

"'Ow should I know?"

"It's tattooed on the back of their neck . . ."

The Rt Rev Tom Butler's weekend activities in Crucifix Lane, which have added so much to the gaiety of the nation at this festive time, will remind every Monty Python aficionado of the celebrated Dead Bishop sketch. The surreal nature of his adventures - those toys! - perfectly accords with the spirit of the piece, whose dialogue I have plundered in the exchanges above.

In breaking the story, the Mail On Sunday was in its usual harrumphing mode when it declared in the first sentence "A Church of England bishop is facing an uncertain future after an extraordinary drinking binge". Actually, the newspaper was stating no more than the truth for, as Private Eye's Rev J.C.Flannel might observe: "Which of us is not, in a very real sense, facing an uncertain future?" Of course, what was meant was that Butler was possibly going to be in trouble with his superiors - or, at least, he was if the Mail On Sunday had anything to do with it.

But any action against tipsy Tom (who appears to have overdone it at the Irish Embassy, a comic venue in itself, of course) would have offended against the long-respected tradition that our bishops must be allowed to enjoy themselves. We like to see our bishes beaming, good-natured, eager to enjoy the good things of life, whether these be oysters or alcohol. As John Milton put it (admittedly through the mouth of a bad-hat character): "Wherefore did Nature pour her bounties forth/With such a full and unwithdrawing hand,/Covering the earth with odours, fruits, flocks,/Thronging the seas with spawn innumerable,/But all to please and sate the curious taste?"

The Rt Rev Richard Harries, the recently retired Bishop of Oxford, enjoyed a drink. I have been a guest, alongside him, at a number of well-lubricated functions over the years. He was an occasional lunchtime visitor to the pub just down the road from his office, the Fishes in North Hinksey, where I once found myself sharing a table (and chat) with him. His predecessor, the Rt Rev Patrick Rodger, also relished his lunchtime outings but favoured the White Hart at Wytham (well, the Fishes was rather spartan in his time).

I suppose the ideal bishop in my eyes, and those of many of my generation, was the one portrayed with consummate skill by William Mervyn in the television series All Gas and Gaiters. This popular BBC1 comedy, which was first seen exactly 40 years ago, focused on the cathedral close of St Ogg's, where the easy-going bishop, his dithering curate Noote (Derek Nimmo) and bibulous archdeacon (played by the veteran farceur Robertson Hare) were generally to be found resisting some new curb on their fun being proposed by the ascetic dean. He was portrayed with enormous skill by John Barron (later CJ in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin), and if I say that his wife was a battle-axe, do I really need to add that she was played by Joan Sanderson?

Part of the reason that I so much enjoyed this gently amusing series was that it appeared - and I stress that word - fairly accurately to reflect what I could see going on in the one cathedral close with which I was in any way familiar. It took little stretching of the imagination to translate the action to Peterborough, where the bishop's palace was occupied at the time by the Rt Rev Cyril Eastaugh and his charming wife Lady Laura, and the Deanery housed the distinctly frosty Very Rev Richard Wingfield Digby. Lady Laura, incidentally, was a member of the Cecil family (I once heard her give a fascinating talk about the introduction of electric lighting to Hatfield House). One of her relations, Jonathan Cecil, took over the part of Noote when Derek Nimmo eventually left the cast of All Gas and Gaiters.

A final thought on the adventures of Bishop Tom. Like Oxford's own Richard Harries, he has been a regular contributor to the Thought for the Day slot on Radio 4's Today programme (though a much less distinguished one). All the newspaper reports that I have seen have mentioned this fact. It is, after all, the most high-profile thing about him. Yet, curiously, the connection has not been alluded to in any reference to the affair I've heard on Today. The ideal moment came on Tuesday when John Humphries was chortling about a newspaper cartoon on the subject.

Odd, or not?