And hey!/How 'bout that nutty Star Wars bar/Can you forget all the creatures in there?

As a follow-up to last week's post about some people who have decided to declare themselves superheroes, here's a BBC report about some people who have decided to declare themselves Jedi:

Hairdresser Barney [Jones] became interested in the Jedi faith after 390,000 other Star Wars fans across England and Wales declared it as their religion on the 2001 census.

An internet campaign was fought to see Jedi officially included in the list and although this did not happen, collators included a special code to register the Jedis.

He said: "As children we always watched the Star Wars films anyway. We noticed that there were a couple of sites on the internet, Jedi church sites.

"We printed off a couple of sermons and did a sermon in our house for a couple of friends one night."

Barney and his musician brother Daniel, from Holyhead, help run four websites devoted to the development of the "faith".

They plan to go to the official opening of a Surrey-based branch or "chapter" of the UK Church of the Jedi in April, and hope to hire an Anglesey venue for their own services.

For some social context, here's a story I wrote back in 2003. Its cast of pop pagans includes fans who worship the gods of Middle Earth, a group of occultists who tried to channel the Amazing Spider-Man, and "a spiritual practice centered around Fred Mertz, Ethel's husband on I Love Lucy."

Every successful church eventually schisms. If the British Jedi don't splinter over the inevitable canon debates, you can expect them to be ripped apart by the eternal nerd argument: Which Star Wars movie is the best?*

* This one, of course: