Changes in the UK’s gambling laws mean that gamblers can have a flutter on Good Friday for the first time since high-street betting was legalised in 1961. Bookies are now free to open every day of the year except for Christmas Day - and while no horses are running in Britain today, overseas events and greyhound racing are likely to be popular bets.
Church leaders have, however, criticised the move, and are urging people not to bet on the day of Christ’s Passion and his death on the cross in expiation of our sins.
However, the bookmakers argue that, in today’s secularised society, people should be free to make up their own minds on how to waste their money, adding that their Easter operations would be sensitive and tactful.
Christians are being offered odds of 1500-1 on the Second Coming, 250-1 on the Apocalypse or 15-1 on the Pope inadvertently giving a Nazi salute in his traditional Easter address. Extra-confident and zealous believers can also bet on whether they will be among the 5,000 Elect taken into heaven in the Rapture.
As well as the option of paying tax on their stake or their winnings, gamblers can likewise choose to pay an additional tithe supporting the ecclesiastical mission of the holy church - although it is not clear whether any of the established churches will accept filthy lucre tainted with the blood of Christ from sinning bookies.
In what some observers see as an attempt to tackle the forces of Mammon on their home ground, one vicar in St Austell is offering his flock 100-1 on the wrath of God being visited upon the local William Hill branch, perhaps in the form of a thunderbolt or a plague of boils.
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