Counting beads

A headline in today’s Daily Telegraph reads “Rosary is not just a fashion item, explains church”. Accompanying it is a photograph of footballer David Beckham wearing not one, not two but four sets of rosary beads around his neck. “The soaring popularity of rosary beads among the fashion conscious”, explains the Telegraph, “has provoked the Roman Catholic Church to issue a leaflet stressing their religious significance”.

That loud whirring sound you hear is that of my late mother (a fanatical Catholic who said the rosary every day of her life) rotating at 5,500 rpm in her grave.

Google tells me that Beckham appeared on the front of Vanity Fair wearing his, er, religious kit — thus.