Here's your chance to put religion into the millennium

O Lord, we pray Thou wilt look down upon this palace built to Thy glory in Greenwich...

THE TROUBLE with the millennium celebration, according to all the churches, is that it will have no religious content. Indeed, last week Cardinal Basil Hume pleaded with us all to spend the last moments of the old century saying a prayer.

Well, it is not normally this column's task to give out spiritual advice, but one hates to ignore a Cardinal in distress, so today I am bringing you a selection of prayers which are suitable for use at the end of the millennium. Please cut them out and keep them until the end of the year.

Prayers for the millennium

For those who have still not made up their mind how to spend the turn of the millennium

O Lord, we beg Thee now to look down upon those foolish virgins who have still not made fitting arrangements to celebrate the two thousandth birthday of Thy son, and pray that there may be hotel rooms available in outlying parts of New Zealand or Fiji or at least close enough to the International Date Line to satisfy Thee. Failing which, that they may be happy to sit in their lonely bedsitting-rooms and watch TV, if they can handle the sight of people such as Alan Titchmarsh and Michael Parkinson ushering in a new epoch, Amen.

For those affected by the millennium bug

O Lord, as this old millennium draws to a close and computers are about to go on the blink, or not as the case may be, look down now upon lift operators everywhere, and jet pilots and hospital managers and everyone who depends for their very life on computerised systems, and make sure that these vital systems do not go do not go do not go do not go THERE HAS BEEN AN ERROR PLEASE REFER TO INSTRUCTIONS OR RING HELPLINE No, just joking, O Lord! Amen.

For the Millennium Dome and all those who sail in it

O Lord, we pray that Thou wilt look down upon this palace built to Thy glory in Greenwich and that what up to now has been a bit of a national joke will totally surprise all the faint-hearted people and the wet blankets who predicted it to be a total failure and that it will turn out to be a raging success like other erstwhile national jokes such as Channel 4, the National Lottery, Virgin Trains. Well, maybe not Virgin Trains, but then maybe in view of the Blessed Virgin Mary it was tempting Thy wrath to name it Virgin Trains in the first place. Over and out, Amen.

A prayer for all those who have to work on the night of the millennium, such as vets and ambulance drivers and sous-chefs in kitchens where the chef has taken the night off and those who have to go out in all sorts of weather to help their fellow men such as AA drivers and those who mend video sets that have gone on the blink

O Lord, make sure at least that they get outrageously well paid for the evening's work. Amen.

For journalists working at the millennium's end

O Lord, forasmuch as many of Thy servants are hard-working journalists out and about on the last night of the century trying to find some story, any story, lead them to ancient pensioners born in 1899 and thus about to enter their third century and to babies who are first to be born in AD2000 and to seeming miracles, and then write up their accounts without inventing more than is strictly necessary. Amen.

For Peter Mandelson

O Lord, whereas the Millennium Dome was going to be Thy servant Peter's crowning moment of glory and now all the credit has gone to other people, and things have rather fallen in upon his head, look down upon him now, we pray, and ensure that his political rehabilitation proceeds steadily, but not that fast. In fact take Thy time about it, O Lord; place it upon Thy back-burner for a while longer. Amen.

A prayer for Ludovic Kennedy and all atheists

O Lord, look down now on Thy faithless servant Ludovic Kennedy and all such as do not believe in Thee and do not take this millennium seriously except as a kind of secular party and piss-up, and we beseech Thee now to appear in Ludovic Kennedy's sitting-room towards midnight, and say loudly: "This is something of a surprise for thee, O Ludovic, in that I am the Lord God Almighty in whom thou dost not believe, yet here I am in thy living-room, don't think much of the curtains incidentally, so the atheism that has sustained thee all these years looks a bit of a bad bet now, and what have you got to say to that, O Ludo, speak up I can't hear thee, yes, thou can grovel if thou likest?" Amen.