Saint Peter: Next!

Man [defiant]: Christopher Hitchens.

St Peter [a half-beat late]: Personal account?

Hitchens: Do you know who I am? Of course you do, it’s one of the drawbacks of omniscience. And this place… It’s obvious where this is. I haven’t seen taste this bad on such a scale since I last liberated one of Saddam’s palaces. No, no, let me finish. I suppose I should have known you’d turn out to be one of those drivelling relativists who thought that war was a bad idea. But answer this: has even one of the hundreds of thousands of people who’ve passed through your gate since I was so thunderingly right about Iraq blamed me at all? They probably just snivelled about Satan. The pathetic prisoners of religion.

Saint Peter: So you still don’t think you might have been wrong about God?

Hitchens: Oh, don’t think you can catch me with that old chestnut. Just shows how religion poisons everything. Let me tell you: death is certain, replacing both the siren song of paradise and the dread of hell.

Saint Peter: So you aren’t in the least bit surprised to find yourself here…

Hitchens: Here? [repeats with rising, scornful incredulity] Here? This… continent of spacious heaven, adorned with plant, fruit, flower ambrosial, gems and gold… This kind of divine North Korea? Come off it. Where are the ashtrays? I’m off somewhere I can get a drink. [exits]