In breaking the news to the readers of The Mail on Sunday that the Poet Laureate, Dame Carol Ann Duffy, had written a poem ending with the line “God is gay”, reporter Jonathan Petre reached for a quotation from a retired archbishop of Canterbury.

Once upon a time, former archbishops of Canterbury, if they could be brought to the telephone, might be relied upon to be outraged by whatever horror had been uncovered – a blasphemous advertisement, say, or the abolition of Christmas.

But Lord Carey of Clifton (Canterbury 1991-2002) was not playing that game. “You don’t expect a poet to be a theologian, however eminent the poet is,” he remarked. “Although I may have questions about the phraseology of the poem, the intention is to say we side with all those who are the victims of a terrible ideology.”

He meant those shot in Orlando, the occasion for the Poet Laureate’s effusion.  So The Mail on Sunday sought another view from that taxi driver among social networking sites, Twitter. “Fair play to Carol Ann Duffy for writing a poem as bad as any atrocity to occur in the 21st Century,” an unnamed tweeter had commented.