(Billy, piece of advice: Don't go. I've already met your Maker and He's not worth the trip.)

Lord, Lord, how I loved to hear Billy Graham in his heyday, years ago, before he became a billionaire. How he thundered out the gospel in those days, to the lost sheep of the world! Come the Final Judgment, thousands of forgiven ne'er-do-wells will settle forever in Heaven, a gated community, in private mansions on five-acre lots, along boulevards of transparent gold, with Crystal River frontage out back – and they'll have the Rev. Billy Graham to thank for it. And if the projected housing shortage never materializes down there in my own maximum-security neighbourhood, well, I guess we can thank Billy for that, too.

The Rev. Jerry Falwell has explained to his television audience, loud and often, that the "Billy Graham is the chief servant of Satan in America," but don't take that complaint too literally. Rival evangelists ever since saints Peter and Paul have engaged in Jerry's brand of gentle teasing. Nor would I call Jerry Falwell or Billy Graham my "servants." I would just call them valued allies in my Coalition of the Willing. The exact truth is that Billy never worked for me very much, nor for very long; I actually owe more to Jerry, whose Liberty Channelhas done me a world of good.

Still, I suppose you could find an element of truth in Jerry Falwell's remark about Billy Graham, because I never liked Jerry, but I used to be one of Billy's biggest fans. (Don't anyone tell that to Billy, it's a secret.) It's not like I was ever in love with Billy Graham. I was not a Billy Graham groupie. I never had my walls plastered with autographed Billy Graham posters. But I did attend several of his Greater World Evangelistic Crusades over the years and I found them all quite entertaining, spiritually speaking.

While we're on the subject, here's one for Ripley's Believe it or Not: Billy owes me one. Literally. On 6 September 1963, at the Greater Los Angeles Billy Graham Crusade, I persuaded the fellow sitting next to me to go forward and get saved. Beelzebub made me do it. That may not make me "the chief servant of Billy Graham in America." I did, however, have that one shining moment, at a Billy Graham Crusade, when I led a sinner to accept Jesus Christ into his heart as his personal lord and saviour.

(Sorry, I cannot tell you that story right now. I have other fish to fry; or rather, I have stories to tell of fish and Ken-dolls whom Billie pulled from off the barbie just in the nick of time.)

Back in the 1950s, everyone on the planet wanted to see Billy! hear Billy! talk Billy! By my own lowball estimate there were some 2.4 million women in the U.K. alone who wanted to do Billy! (but he was not that kind of evangelist).

Most of you won't remember the final meeting of the 1954 Greater London Billy Graham Evangelistic Crusade; but I do, I was there. England, in those days, was still a Christian nation and this was the single largest Christian gathering in British history, dwarfing the previous record-setting event, the domestic crusades of 1264-1290 CE, when tens of thousands of English Christians united as one man to kill English Jews, or drive them into the sea.

So to Wembley Stadium they came, 25 May 1954, from every white Anglican-Saxon Protestant corner of Britain. What a day! What a night! Billy Graham preached the gospel, in a cold, soaking rain, to 120,000 Brits at Wembley, and to a spill-over crowd of 65,000, all of whom came voluntarily, most of whom would not have paid tuppence to see the Archbishop of Canterbury on the sunniest day of the year. But at Billy's invitation, they came, they saw, they heard, they believed. And they got drenched to their knickers.

The good Lord supplied the guest speaker from America. I supplied the weather.

By the time that London Crusade was over, the Rev. William Franklin Graham of Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, was more popular than the Beatles.

My friend Belial, who loves to correct me in a mistake, has just whispered in my ear, smugly, that the Fab Four were still wearing short pants and not actually a band yet in 1954. Okay, bad comparison; but Billy was definitely more popular than Jim Reeves, the Crew-Cuts, or Guitar Slim.

– L.