Fancy a tipple?

You know how it goes. You're given a bad glass of wine and you pull a face like you're working the mixing desk for a Jennifer Lopez recording session.

Asked what's wrong, you tell them "It tastes like piss", only for the smart arse in the group to ask "Oh, when have you drunk piss then?" Hilarious, I know.

Of course, you could tell them that you're like Sarah Miles, and believe in the medicinal qualities of urine. Or point out that, since taste is approximately 70% smell, you have technically experienced the flavour before. However, there's now a third option - just say that you're a whisky drinker.

Now I'm not saying that all whisky is bad - even though I'd rather give Joan Rivers a bed bath than drink it. However, one industrious distiller has created a curious new malt blend out of other people's waste. Although I can't see it flying off the shelves.

Perhaps inspired by the water-saving concept of "If it's yellow, let it mellow", designer and researcher James Gilpin has taken advantage of the alarming rise in type-2 diabetes, turning the urine of diabetes sufferers into 'Gilpin Family Whisky'. In retrospect, it all seems so logical - millions more people producing litres of pee with a high sugar content, and the whisky market growing faster than any other alcoholic beverage.

Now I'd pay good money to see him pitch that to Deborah Meaden and the other Dragons. If they turned him down he could at least throw a drink in their faces.

Gilpin's dubious dram isn't commercially available, but apparently he's giving bottles away at the Abandon Normal Devices (AND) Festival in Manchester. James is trying to initiate debate about health-care and recycling, asking "Is it plausible to suggest that we start utilizing our water purification systems in order to harvest the biological resources that our elderly already process in abundance?"

Rather than complaining that Grandma smells of wee, just grab a tumbler and some oat-cakes and you've got yourself a cut-price Robbie Burns Night. It certainly gives a new meaning to the idea of a night on the piss.

Curb your indignation

As one of the co-creators and head writers on Seinfeld, Larry David made the character of George Costanza, brought to life by Jason Alexander, a cariacature of his own social ineptitude. But when Seinfeld ended there were clearly sides of Larry's personality which still needed the chance to air themselves. And so 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' was born, in which Larry plays an exaggerated version of himself, attempting to get through life as a multi-millionaire malcontent.

According to the way he portrays his own neuroses, it would seem that Larry's main goal in life is to offend and annoy everyone he meets. Now it seems that his tactless insensitivities have crossed over into real life, as the latest episode of the long-running, largely improvised comedy, have caused a whole new level of offence.

In the rather implausible plot of the new episode, Larry was on medication which made him pee with excessive force. As a consequence, his accidental splashback left a rogue droplet on the face of a portrait of Jesus, hanging in his employee's bathroom. She and her mother became convinced that the droplet was a miraculous tear, and felt the need to share their holy artifact with the world.

Unfortunately, the Catholic League of America, not usually known for its sense of humour, was not amused. Bill Donohue, the organisation's president, said in a statement, "Was Larry David always this crude? Would he think it comedic if someone urinated on a picture of his mother? This might be fun to watch, but since HBO only likes to dump on Catholics, and David is Jewish, we'll never know."

Donohue must never have seen the episode where Larry was labeled a 'self-hating Jew' for whistling Wagner, or the time when Larry mistook a contestant from the TV show Survivor as someone who had 'survived' the Holocaust.

It would seem that the target for Larry's humour here, is the fanatical faith of people who insist on seeing meaningful signs in contrivance and coincidence. The people who recognise the face of Jesus in a plate of manicotti, on a stack of pancakes, or on the back of a toilet door in Ikea.

Larry David's skill is to poke fun at the foibles of modern life - from phonecall etiquette and disabled bathrooms, to terrorism paranoia and inappropriate language. It's only fair that, occasionally, religious convictions might enjoy the same level of scrutiny.

It's just a shame that the Catholic church is willing to allow its persecution complex to get in the way of enjoying some of the finest comedy on TV. If they weren't so keen to see themselves as the butt of every joke, they'd realise that this whole story is really just a splash in the pan.