Conservative MP Louise Mensch reckons our next chief rabbi should be motor-mouthed Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

Mrs Mensch, the member for Corby, says Rabbi Boteach, whom she met while a student at Oxford, gave her a "lifelong love of, and appreciation for, the Jewish faith". If our community is looking for greater media impact and some showbiz pizzazz, then Boteach could well be the right candidate. For all his erudite works, Lord Sacks has never published a book on sex, hosted his own chat show or hung out with Michael Jackson.

But the United Synagogue may well decide that Boteach is more suited to the job into which he says he has been recently voted: Intergalactic Chief Rabbi of the Milky Way.