Why Joe Lycett Might Kill Us All

…and what he’s got to do to stop himself.

If you’ve no idea about Joe Lycett or his #BendersLikeBeckham stunt then please read this brief summary first.

If you would prefer me (and my Joe Lycett impersonating AI companion) to read this to you… please take out a paid subscription and you’ll find the audio at the end of the text;

Dear Joe,

This is an open letter to you from the High Priest of Church of Burn. It has been approved for public dissemination by a majority vote at the Emergency Ecumenical Council of 23rd February 2023.

My communications with the Office of the Archbishop of Canterbury have taught me the importance of using first names. They allow us to connect with the person behind the title. ‘Archbishop’ or ‘High Priest’, ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’, or simply ‘Mummy’ or ‘Daddy’ can be a barrier to honest exchange.

I hope, then, you don’t mind me calling you ‘Joe’, Joe.

What I want to discuss with you here is of the gravest consequence to all living creatures and to your own eternal soul. It’s very heavy stuff. And it demands that I speak from my heart directly to yours.

It all has to do with your #BendersLikeBeckham stunt.

Church of Burn (CoB) believes that money is the oxygen on which the fires of global warming burn. And that our current relationship to it is the main driver to social injustice. Our sacred mission is to change money by changing our relationship to money.

My counterpart at the Church of England (CoE) likes to preach a watered-down version of what we — at CoB — practice as our religious rite.

“Mammon..” says Justin Welby, “..gains strength through our obedience.” ¹

High Priest Jonathan conducts The Ritual at CoB 2019 at The Cockpit. All Hail The Staff! Photo by Jonathan Greet.

Justin’s got to do what he can to get bums on pews. The CoE has been struggling in recent times. CoB is on the up. We’re a growing religion. So we’ve no hard feelings about them trying to steal our moves. We take it as a compliment.

Trouble is, being a nice, middle-class-friendly, church-cum-state institution the CoE lacks the minerals to do what needs to be done.

At CoB we disobey money, directly. We burn it. Followers take part in a ritual sacrifice that we take very seriously, indeed. We make it as intense as possible. Individuals usually burn between £20 and £50 each. Anything from a few hundred pounds up to £1500 has been burned at a single event.

We don’t offer our congregation a remembrance or representation of something that happened long ago. Rather, they experience the immediacy of a real ritual sacrifice.

The Holy Pot of Ash containing thousands of pounds worth of sacrifices. A facsimile of our Holy Pot was on display from Oct 11th 2022 to Jan 8th 2023 at The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge for their Defaced! Money, Conflict, Protest exhibition. Photo by Jonathan Greet (2019).

So Joe, everyone in CoB was watching your #BendersLikeBeckham stunt with great anticipation. Up until Tuesday 22nd November 2022, we’d offered praise to our Goddess Melusine and hailed The Staff [ All Hail, The Staff! ] because we believed that in you we’d found our new Apostle.

Your reveal video swept away that hope. There was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Ordinary, hard-working, money burners everywhere demanded action. Our Archbishops called an Emergency Ecumenical Council for 23rd December 2022 . They listened and gave the matters at hand their serious consideration. Their findings were presented at a second Emergency Ecumenical Council on 23rd January 2023.

It is now my solemn duty to inform you of the Archbishops’ Determination;

“By not destroying £10k Joe Lycett might have committed the most terrible crime in the history of humankind”.

It continues with the reasoning…

“Joe told us he’d pour water into the cracks at the base of the Dark Towers of Capital. The Dark Towers exist in every thought and every exchange, and they’ve come to dominate humankind’s relations with one another and with nature. Water can seep deep into the fissures. As it freezes and thaws the foundations are weakened and so Capital’s hold over us is diminished. But Joe hasn’t poured in water. He’s poured in mortar. He’s sealed up the cracks and made the Dark Towers stronger”.

Don’t worry about the mythological stuff, Joe. It’s the way the Archbishops roll.

I realise all this may come as a terrible shock to you.

I understand that being told you might be the worst person ever to have lived is a lot to take on board. As the High Priest of CoB I’ve no choice but to faithfully relay the Archbishops’ words. But please be assured, my purpose in this open letter is not to admonish or shame you.

We all make mistakes, Joe. Maybe not civilisation-ending ones like yours, but mistakes none-the-less. So I’m writing to you as an act of pastoral care. Care for you and for every living creature on earth. I want to help you understand what the Archbishops are saying. I want to offer you my support. And ultimately, I want this letter to empower you.

Our Goddess Melusine as depicted on the locking-mechanism cover-plate of a late C16th money chest. The chest is located in the archives of Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. A similar chest with a similar albeit less explicit cover-plate can be found under the founding charter of the Bank of England in the BoE Museum, London. Photo is copyright of Germanisches Nationalmuseum.

Now, your immediate response may be to claim — as you have elsewhere — that your stunt was “not about the money”. Faced with such a serious charge it’ll be tempting for you to double down on that. I beg you. Please don’t do that, Joe.

You made the shredding of £10k the centrepiece of your stunt because you believed it would provoke outrage. With David Beckham as both a target and a conduit you hoped to turn that outrage into pressure. If David was made to feel uncomfortable this would impact on his Qatari hosts. And perhaps make life a little easier, or at least provide some hope, for LGBTQ+ people in Qatar.

You undoubtedly succeeded in bringing attention to the LGBTQ+ cause. But by threatening the shredding and by targeting David Beckham, you made the context money and morality. Sometimes it’s the obvious things that elude us, Joe. I mean isn’t money and morality the subtext to much of Got Your Back? Even in the brilliant, hilarious and heart-warming More, More, More! you couldn’t escape. Your starting point was money. You added sexuality and then reached out for the highest ideals of freedom, community and love. (It was beautiful, Joe.)

If you’re unconvinced by my argument just check out the google trending stats for searches on ‘destroy money’. Whatever your original intentions, Joe, #BendersLikeBeckham ended up very much about the money. Accepting this is your first step on the road to redemption.

High Priest Jonathan preaching at CoB’s Service at The Secret Garden Party 2022. Photo by Zoë A Padley.

Next step is drugs!

Matrix-style. A red pill, blue pill moment for you.

Take the blue pill and you’ll continue to believe that redemption can be ‘earned’. You will structure your entire existence and mould all your actions in support of this conviction. Good deeds will be credits in a ledger, bad deeds will be debits. You will suppose — or more likely you will invent a God to suppose on your behalf — that even against the infinity of time and space the balance of your deeds can be measured and a final tally determined.

Take the red pill and you’ll understand the truth; redemption can only be sought and never bought. You’ll realise you cannot bargain for it, demand it or work in lieu of it. You’ll still feel the desire for it as keenly as ever. But you’ll know that seeking it is all that we may do. Ultimately, true redemption is — and must be — a gift of Divine Grace. Your oneness with the Absolute is not an emergent property conjured up from the material world. It exists eternally. All thoughts and deeds are merely the means to its discovery.

Ok. This isn’t actually a choice, Joe.

Just take the fucking red pill and lets see if we can get you off the hook and save the world.

Geoff Winde performs ‘Money is as Innocent as the Gun’ at CoB’s Bardic Synod at The Cockpit June 2021. Photo by Thomas Hensher.