I seem to remember (the now Rev) Joe Abela back in the far-off mists of time, when we were both at Tal-Qroqq. I was studying beaglery and he was a budding clerical gent, and when one says he was at Tal-Qroqq, this was up to the point in time when Dom Mintoff and his henchmen's respect for academia bundled him and his colleagues off the campus.

If this is the Joe I remember, he was one of those athletic types who would charge off down the track, leaving most everyone gasping in his wake. I'm not sure that he didn't play for the Theology footy team, too - all the holy rollers seemed to delight in running the rest of us off our feet. Our theory was that they were un-hindered in their quest for physical excellence by the vices and vicissitudes that used to beset the rest of us. You know what I mean, beer and babes, basically.

It goes without saying, of course, that the dear fellow also had something of a brain - you don't get on in that faculty by being a couple of fries short of a Mac Meal, that's for sure. It must have been something in the water, too, because that lot seemed to have quite a fair crop of independently minded folk, Fr Joe Borg being another who springs to mind.

Thirty years on, I probably wouldn't recognise Fr Abela if he trotted up and patted me on the head, but then, I mightn't recognise someone I'd seen last week, so horrendous is my memory for faces and so lacking is my facility for putting names to them. If I bump into you and look blank while proffering the brand of bull that is so synonymous with my profession, don't be offended - I'm always doing it, so much so that the most common phrase to be heard issuing from the wife's mouth after I've failed to introduce her, yet again, to someone we've just bumped into is "you've no idea who he is, do you?"

To which my reply is generally a sheepish bleat.

But I certainly wasn't surprised to read the account of Fr Joe's testimony in the suit filed against that repressive and reprehensible lunga manus of the regime, the Board of Cinema and Theatre Censors (or whatever banner they skulk under) He was fair, reasonable and clear, which is a quality sorely lacking in way too many of the citizenry.

He has now been removed from the chairmanship of the Church's very own Board of Censors, the Church Film Reviewing Board.

The juxtaposition of these two events is perhaps coincidental, though I beg to be forgiven for denying that I am so naïve as to believe this. Of course, the Church has every right to have its own advisory body and use it to guide the faithful about what it (the Church) thinks are good or not-so-good performances to watch, and it has every right to dispose of its human resources as it deems fit.

And I have every right to express my disgust at this petty manoeuvre.

Just as I had, and still have, every right to express my disgust, pure and simple, at the sheer undiluted arrogance of the Board of Film and Theatre Censors who dared, in their smug omniscience, lay down the law on what I, an adult, should or should not watch.

Shame on you, the whole flipping lot of you, for coming up with this appalling ban and shame on you for not resigning with your heads hung low.