A Rochdale man has today admitted that it would have been much easier to find God had he known what God looks like.

Garry Bennett began his search 10 years ago after meeting a successful entrepreneur at a business conference.

Bennett told the Herald, “I met this guy and he’d been in prison for aggravated burglary and found God while he was there. When he got out he founded a business that became successful and he became a millionaire. It was then that I started searching for God.”

Bennett began his search at Strangeways as that was the prison the man he’d met was at when he found God. It soon went wrong when officers spotted him on CCTV and he was arrested on suspicion of trying to smuggle drugs into the prison.

Things went from bad to worse when Bennett revealed to the officers that he was searching for God who he thought lived at the prison. Bennett told the Herald, “Had I had a photo of God I could have shown them I might not have spent the next 2 years in a mental hospital.”

On his release Bennett went to the Vatican where he found a painting of God but soon began to doubt its authenticity. “This painting had been painted 1500 years after God walked the Earth so I thought it was a long shot. Then someone pointed out that the representation of God was actually the painter’s secret lover and had appeared in loads of other paintings.”

Bennetts next trip took him to South America after a man called Jesus contacted him. “I thought this is great. A bloke called Jesus. Turns out it’s a common name in Latin America.” Bennett spent the next 3 years chained to a radiator until his family had collected enough money to pay FARC a ransom.

Bennett has now admitted that he may never find God. “I’ve spent a fortune trying to find God. Ran up £50,000 of debt on my credit card. The card company don’t accept rewards in Heaven as payment.”

Bennett is also the subject of restraining orders from several men with beards and long hair after mistaking them for God and building shrines to them. One shrine even involved a 7 foot statue done in classic Greek style and made entirely of marble.

Telling the Herald Bennett said, “If I’d had a photo or description it might have helped. at least my credit card company wouldn’t have sent the bailiffs round.”

Fact checked by Snopes; Plagiarised by Andrew Neil; Nancy Sinatra's favourite Rochdale satirist; sued by Chris Froome and winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.* *Not all of these necessarily true.