I got a job application form today with one of those monitoring forms attached.

"If the vacancy you are applying for is in Northern Ireland, please provide details of your religion:" It gave three choices

• Roman Catholic
• Protestant
• Other (please specify)

I ticked other, but I'm not sure what to write beside it. Technically I think I'm more agnostic than atheist, but neither sounds much fun. On the census, since there was no box for either of the above, I was one of those funny guys (err..) who ticked "Other" and wrote Jedi. Now you can do this on the census because you can't be prosecuted on the basis of the information you provide for the religion questions, but I'm fairly sure I remember reading on one of these monitoring forms before that it's illegal under NI legislation to provide false details on a monitoring form. Nevertheless, if anyone out there has any creative suggestions please let me know

Incidentally, they also asked me to provide my ethnic origin, stressing that it wasn't necessarily nationality or country of birth but the way you describe your ethnic identity or racial origin. "White" would seem the obvious choice. For some reason they also deemed it necessary to include "Irish" (surely they're not serious?) along with 3 (yes, three) types of "Black", "Indian", "Chinese", "Pakistani", "Bangladeshi" and "Traveller". Of course there was also the obligatory "Other (please specify)". I was initially tempted to tick "Irish", but my girlfriend told me I'm not Irish, I'm Protestant (OK, not her exact words, but a similar sentiment). So while I went for "White" I did, for a while, consider ticking "Other" and writing "Ulster-Scots" having recently discovered that yes, my ancestors did come from Scotland.

Actually, scratch that. I've just tip-exed out White in favour of "Other - Ulster-Scots". It just sounds more interesting than white, plus now I can be a minority and see what all the fuss is about!

If anyone has any ideas what I can write for religion, be quick, I'm posting it off tomorrow morning.