Archbishop Selection Process Cancelled

Peter Levite: I'm straight back interviewing our informant Lesley Tilgate here for the latest on the Crown Upper Nominations Team of Selectors. Hello Lesley, how is Aldershit?
Lesley Tilgate: Not quite Aldershit. Very good, quite positive; numbers down, finances a mess. [sound of running water]
Peter Levite: Tell us, just what is going on with the see-you-en-tee-esses?
Lesley Tilgate: Rumour has it that the Team has been disbanded and this present competition to run a new Archbishop of All England has been cancelled. [sound of water running stops]
Peter Levite: Why?
Lesley Tilgate: Irregularities in the process, apparently, as a number of officials made sure that the selection process was carried out under equal opportunities procedures.
Peter Levite: I thought head hunting, applications, interviews and the like had to be carried out under equal opportunities procedures.
Lesley Tilgate: Not in the Church in England. [sound of pots clashing]
Peter Levite: What went on?
Lesley Tilgate: They based their selection procedures on talent alone and in their procedures considered a number of talented women and asked people if potential candidates were heterosexual and transgender as well as asking if they were gay.
Peter Levite: Surely that is quite normal.
Lesley Tilgate: Not in the Church in England. Doing it properly has wasted about forty million pounds in hotel fees, travel expenses and compensation for loss of earnings and pensions.
Peter Levite: You are in the know. What happens now?
Lesley Tilgate: First of all they will ask Rowan Tree if he can carry on and do a few duties he used to do as Archbishop. The thing is he is taking up a new post as a part time Art Tutor at Grantham Adult Education Centre, so long as they recruit enough students to do Painting for Leisure. So they reckon he could perhaps stand in and remarry the odd member of the royal family that needs it. That sort of thing. [sound of water swishing] I suppose we could ask to borrow the Irish new boss; they've just selected their new one, no bother.
Peter Levite: But what about finding his replacement?
Lesley Tilgate: They must not follow proper procedure as elsewhere. This means abandoning qualifications with experience and seeing if the man available is the right kind of chap, and went to the right school; the person must be heterosexual or a deeply closeted gay where the rumours have never been substantiated even among the locals; and probably it is time for the man to be clean shaven. [sound of water splashing]
Peter Levite: Tell me, who on earth discovered this cock up among the see-you-en-tee-esses?
Lesley Tilgate: We think that John Sendmehome got a leak, when having a leak with a chap on the inside, that he'd not succeeded in getting to the top of the vote, and that it was Justin R. Ewing instead, the ex-oil magnate. Sendmehome was devastated, and asked if something could be done short of writing a column in the Daily Stun. So then they discovered that officials had followed proper procedure in head hunting before their also proper procedure in selecting, and this of course cannot do in a deeply prejudicial organisation like the Church in England.
Peter Levite: So will John Sendmehome get the job after all, especially as J. R. Ewing is on record saying he doesn't want the job?
Lesley Tilgate: All candidates have to say they don't want the job. Only James Graham actually meant it. I think the effect will be zero. J. R. Ewing has all the right credentials - top school, oil capitalist, some sort of social conscience after he was converted by a fundamentalist, but is no fundy himself. [water swishing, sound of metal objects clashing together] When Giles Farmer and Thomas Rockhard can approve of the same bloke, he's a shoe-in.
Peter Levite: How's your husband? I can't hear him this time. I can hear something.
Lesley Tilgate: Do you think I'd be talking to you with him interrupting me all the time and telling me I'm not bad at this sort of thing? He's on his rounds, visiting the poor of the parish.
Peter Levite: And what are you doing?
Lesley Tilgate: I've got me chin on me mobile talking to you doing the washing and drying up.
 Peter Levite: I'm not washing up; I'm doing my radio programme.
George Hudson: Bit like the weather here at Scarborough station - it was wet but the breeze is drying the platform beyond the cover.
Peter Levite: Thank you for the forecast; go and get your ice cream.
George Hudson: It's not warm enough. A lot warmer in Aldershit.
Peter Levite: Bye to Lesley.
Lesley Tilgate: I've just dropped a glass on the kitchen floor and it bounced. It must be a miracle.