At Long Last.......Another Taxi Driver Speaks!!!!

As part of our occasional series of interviews with leading London taxi drivers, we are today posing the question,` Karl Barth: Fried or Foe?' to Joe Strummer - no, not the front man of anarchic, Rock Against Racism, seventies punk sensations, The Clash, but Driver 777653 with Rock the Kasbah Cabs, Pimlico.  Mr Strummer, or may we call you Joe?, `Karl Barth: Friend or Foe?'  What's the cabbie consensus on that perennial evangelical chestnut?

JS: `Well, mate, I don't know that much about him, like, but I did enjoy that Oliver! musical wot he wrote in the sixties. You gotta pick a pocket or two ---ooo!!  The film version woz superb, mind you.  Nancy was gorgeous and Oliver Reed woz a very scary Bill Sikes, even though that Ron Moody was a bit too likeable as Fagin and all that.  Not true to Dickens's original intention at all. But still a laudable example of wholesome family entertainment, mate.

RT: Actually, Joe, I think you're confusing Karl Barth, theologian, with Lionel Bart, writer of sixties West End musicals.

JS: Plume de ma tante!  So I am. Sorry mate, my mistake. Karl Barth.  Of course.  Greatest theologian of the twentieth century - and I don't mean that as a compliment, guvnor!  While Lionel Bart's musicals woz fillin' theatres all over Britain and America, Karl Barth's theology woz emptyin' churches all over Europe - two phenomena that may well ave been related, if you ask me and all that.   I mean, don't get me wrong - it weren't 'is fault or nothin'.  But while Cornelius Van Halen's criticism was a bit OTT (he was never the same after David Lee Roth replaced Eejay Jung in the band), he 'it the nail on the 'ead when he said that Barth lifted theological truth claims into the realms of - wossat Germanian term 'e used?? - Bullsgechichte, that's it.  Bullsgechichte. He turned theology into total Bullsgeschichte and all that.  Mind you, I ave to say that I did enjoy 'is Letter to the Romans. The missus gave it to me for Christmas one year. Lots of good stuff in it, I reckon.  Funny, though, innit, the only thing I didn't understand woz why he chose to name it after that letter wot Paul wrote in the New Testament and all that. Strange coincidence given the lack of anything else in common.  Bit like me writin' a book on taxi drivin' and callin' it War and Peace, ain't it?  The wife paid good money for that book, thinkin' it would be exegetical, Pauline and stuff, but it was all Kierkegaard, Kohlbrugge, and Nietzsche and Infinite Qualitative Difference and all that. I mean, the government should do summat about it, mate.  Look, if I 'ad a quid for every time the old lady gave me some present for Christmas and I....... (That's quite enough of that - Del-Boy)