Shawna Hammond is a Pastafarian. Created in 2005, the ‘religion’ worships at the mythical Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and followers wear colanders as religious headgear. With pirates as demigods, the monster created the earth after a night of alcohol-fuelled inebriation. The religion's altar-native to the Ten Commandments reads: "Arrrr. To be a good follower of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, ye should drink much meade and surround yerself with as many buxom wenches as possible.”

After what I have just penne’d, you may surmise they have gone pasta joke, but minority ‘religions’ are gaining weight as light-hearted movements oppose the teachings of organised religion.

Writing tentatively to avoid provoking yet another complaints letter, my research has shown that certain minority beliefs can reach the hallowed land of the mainstream. Xenu, the leader of the Galactic confederacy, brought billions of people to earth in a spacecraft and detonated hydrogen bombs in volcanoes. Thetans then clustered onto human bodies before the books, DVDs and educational courses were introduced as a religious cash cow. It could be the script for a cult ‘B’ movie, but is the foundations on which Scientology is based.

The church of the SubGenius non-committedly satirises religion and conspiracy theories. Founded by a man in the 1950s who sounds like a 1970s Glasgow Rangers defender, Bob Dodds, it has some credence, but is outgeniused by the Prince Philip movement. At 96, with a celebratory telegram from one indoors just over the horizon, ‘movement’ is not a word I would associate with the potty mouthed royal. The Yaohanen tribe who frequent the southern island of Tanna in Avnuatu disagree and believe Philip to be ‘divine’. He even visited them in order to stroke his royal ego a few years back. Thankfully the Yaohanen peoples do not speak the Queen's English so were spared offence from the blue riband version of Jim Davidson with Tourette’s.

My hunt for obscure religions continued and led me to some fantastical places. The Church of All Worlds have cornered the neo-pagan market. Oberon Zell-Ravenheart was the founder. Reading his name, I am thankful he was not a premier league football as at £2 a letter, his name emblazoned on the back would nearly double the replica kit outlay.

Acting like the modern-day Durex, ‘thou shall not procreate’ is the one and only commandment of the ‘Church of Euthanasia’. Staffed by members whose parents have clearly not been the instigators of their children’s beliefs, the ‘church’ uses jamming and PR to spread the word that we are overpopulated and that ‘enough is enough!’. With less than heart-warming slogans such as ‘Save the planet, kill yourself’ and the repugnant ‘Eat a queer foetus for Jesus’, the remit is clearly to get on the goat of the general populace.

Top of the steeple though is undoubtedly Nuwaubianism. They refer to the teachings of Dwight York. The founder is not ‘that’ Dwight Yorke, but another Dwight York who is currently serving serious time on money laundering charges in Georgia. His teachings include burying the afterbirth to prevent Satan making a ‘duplicate’ child, and claiming women existed for generations before inventing men through genetic manipulation. The singular appealing aspect of the denounceable religion, and possibly enough to save me from becoming a true Jedi, is that each of us has seven clones living in different parts of the world. I cannot imagine being able to irritate people more than by having me as one of a sextuplet. I could be in seven places at once, earn seven times the salary and have seven times the fun? There may be something in this obscure religion malarkey and I could be a convert. Amen to that, brother. Now where do I sign up?