A few years ago, a Columbus replica ship sailed into Dublin, and local people were allowed on board. One of the sailors - dressed in authentic 16th-century gear, but looking so comfortable in it that you wouldn't notice - showed me around.

The captain's cabin, with a cross carved in the door and a crucifix hung on the wall, the deck where they kept the goats and the vegetables; the whole place was wildly authentic, soaked with the Catholicism of Columbus's day.

Mad with envy, I asked him how he'd got the job. "I just finished my degree and went down to the Jobcentre," he said. I asked him what his degree was in.

"Theology."

So someone in the Jobcentre had a sense of humour.