Justin Bieber gets baptised in a bathtub

Leather-jacketed, semi-mohawked, and all too keen to act like a holy Fonz on various American talkshows, Carl Lentz is exactly what we’re looking for here at Lost in Showbiz. He appears to run some brand of New York Pentecostal ministry, which was established with the lead singer of a Christian rock band, and is called Hillsong. Yet so keen is Carl to break into the big leagues that this week found him telling videorazzi website TMZ that he has been taking charge of Justin’s spiritual cleansing.

For those not up to speed, Justin recently fell victim to one of those absolutely classic growing pains: that thing when teenage videos surface of you singing Ku Klux Klan songs, telling racist jokes and joshing about killing black people.

Oddly anxious to insert himself into this distasteful tale, Carl reportedly disclosed to TMZ that he had spent a week doing intensive Bible study with Justin, before the singer was judged ready to be baptised. With no church able to offer the privacy Bieber desired, the ceremony was apparently performed in a friend’s bathtub. Lost in Showbiz is picturing an Auto-Tuned take on a South Pacific classic, with Justin warbling I’m Gonna Wash That N-Word right Outta My Flattop. And maybe a feat. section in which his mentor Usher perched on the bidet and declared: “I’m John the Rap-tist.”

However it shook down, though, the ceremony immediately becomes one of this column’s favourite celebrity baptisms, taking its place proudly alongside the following.

The Murdochs do Jordan

If proof were ever needed that money can buy you panache, it came in the form of the christening Rupert and Wendi Murdoch threw for their daughters Grace and Chloe back in 2010.

Held on the banks of the River Jordan, the event required all guests to wear white, and was flogged to Hello! magazine, which plastered it over 19 pages. The only oversight was not having it filmed for the E! channel.

With Rupert and Wendi apparently so devoid of anything even approaching proper friends that the godparents were two of Australia’s six celebrities: Nicole and Hugh (Kidman and Jackman, though surnames are hardly necessary in the circs). Yet there was a third godfather, it later emerged, who was scrupulously cut out of all the photos flogged to Hello! magazine. His name was Tony Blair – though I get the feeling that since The Unpleasantness, he’s a bit more of an absentee spiritual guide to little Grace and Chloe than once he was. Who knows, maybe the white dress code was chosen to show off the erstwhile British prime minister’s “really good legs Butt”. But maybe none of The Unpleasantness would have happened had Wendi and Rupert just stuck with their theme and gone for Russell or Cate.

Russell Crowe heralds his baptism

Speaking of Russell, the Gladiator star deployed his usual lack of portentousness when he announced that he would be getting himself baptised in the consecrated Byzantine chapel he had built on his Australian ranch. Explaining that he only got into fights because “my intention, for want of a better word, is a certain purity”, Russell explained that: “I do believe that there are more important things than what it is the mind of a man.”

(But not more important than The Best Actor’s Poem, obviously. For those struggling to place the reference, it recalls the moment Russell accepted the Bafta best actor award for A Beautiful Mind, which he chose to mark by reading a poem, which was edited for the TV broadcast. Having found out about the excision,Russell reacted with customary charm. “I don’t give a fuck who you are,” he informed the broadcast’s director at the aftershow party, having pinned him to the wall. “Who on earth had the fucking audacity to take out The Best Actor’s Poem. You fucking piece of shit. I’ll make sure you never work in Hollywood.”)

Loren Roberts lets the side down

“Why does the Pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest Crassus, build the basilica of Saint Peter with the money of poor believers rather than with his own money?”

Thus wondered the seemliness-obsessed Martin Luther in one of his 95 Theses back in 1517. But for Lost in Showbiz, the more pressing inquiry has long been: why in the name of religious gravity did golfer Loren Roberts, one of the most tedious of all the rightwing evangelists to have blighted the PGA tour in recent years, get baptised in the swimming pool of the Polynesian Resort at Disneyworld Florida? Christ, Loren! The Polynesian isn’t even top-tier. At least have a bit of majesty, and do it at the Grand Floridian, or in the musical fountain outside Cinderella Castle. It’s not even clear from Loren’s accounts of the incident whether the pool was closed, or whether the event took place in tandem with three dive-bombings and six child urinations.

Celine Dion’s christening plays Vegas

Not all swimming pools are created equal, of course, which brings us to the baptismal choices of Celine Dion. Anyone doubting Celine is a Proper Celebrity (see also Mariah Carey) need only peruse the estate agent’s particulars for thecustom-built Florida property madam is currently seeking to offload, described as “very luxurious” but above all “exud[ing] an understated elegance”. Which is one way of saying the place has its own waterpark complete with flumes, cannon and one of those lazy rivers engineered to float you gently around a circuit on an inflatable. And in Celine’s case, I imagine those inflatables to be fashioned as blow-up Titanics, with the funnels serving as cocktail holders.

Quite why such holy waters were shunned for the christening of Celine’s twins I have no idea. But I do think she redeemed herself by holding the bash after the ceremony at that most sacred of Christian sites: Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Nelson and Eddy’s baptism was celebrated at The Garden of the Gods Pool. “You could see the entire thing,” remarked the attendee of a convention elsewhere in the hotel. “We didn’t loiter but it was pretty cool.”

Steve Irwin becomes a Mormon

The Mormon practice of posthumously baptising people who were never with the Latter Day Saints, nor expressed the remotest desire to be, is known as “having temple work done”. Which sounds like a euphemism for a demi-facelift, but actually involves a living Mormon standing in for someone like Anne Frank, in order that she should get the chance of making better, more Gospel-led decisions in the afterlife.

As such, the list of posthumous baptisms can read like the fantasy dinner party of cliche – those to have been latterly Latterdayed include Princess Diana and Hitler – while to scan some Mormon talkboards now is to immerse oneself in heated debate about whether and when Osama bin Laden should have his temple work done.

For my money, though, the practice is most encouraging the more random the recipient. In a crowded field, then, Lost in Showbiz would single out Steve Irwin, who was baptised four years after his passing in 2010. As the Book of Mormon crows enthusiastically, if anachronistically: “O Death, where is thy sting?”