with the Rev KEVIN LOGAN, Vicar of Christ Church, Accrington. . .

HELL'S Kitchen it isn't. It's too nice, despite the bleep talk, the celebrity sobs and that handsome devil Gordon the cook.

He's nobbut a caramelised Beelzebub encasing a soft centre.

ITV's current peak viewing fails the hell test because love, light and laughter seep from the shadows of towering egos.

But then again, it would fail the test, wouldn't it?

Who would want a nightly prime-time window on the real hell (which, anyway, has no kitchen)?

Wot! you cry. No Lancashire hotpot? No Amanda Barrie-proof fish-and-chip souffls? Why ever not?

Consider: God lovingly builds us with free will, to accept or reject him.

For this to work, a no-God realm is created for those who want no other boss but themselves.

Hell, therefore, is the absence of God and all that he is.

God's autobiography, the Bible, explains him as light and life. The absence of both ensures no food. It also equals no telly and no stars (celebrity or otherwise).

Nothing except nothing.

Knowing what faced his beloved, God came himself in Jesus to show us the escape route.

En route to that salvation in the passion of the Christ on the cross, he spoke often of this terrible nothingness, echoing with hopeless wails and gnashing of teeth.

In all this is our greatest comfort. God's standards are higher than Gordon Ramsay's.

His heart is bigger and softer. He accepts only perfection, yet offers to coat all those who allow it with Christ's perfection.

Nobody who lets God be God need ever fear the real hell.