Jesus has finally got round to responding to the Beatles’ famous jibe that they are bigger than him. Last night, the Messiah tweeted: “@theBeatles: no you are bloody not”.

The belated response comes as a relief to many Jesus fans who had all but given up on a response from the son of God, who is also known as God himself in some quarters. In a blog post shortly after his tweet, Jesus developed on his thoughts, saying “Bigger than me? I created a religion of my own, and all these hippy scouse popsters did was write some catchy tunes and, time will tell, bring down communism through the power of music. Ergo, I am deffo much bigger than they ever were, are, or ever will be. Look at Latin America – they bloody worship me now over there. It took a while, lol.”

Anglican Pastor Nigel Nigellson defended the Messiah’s lateness of reply: “Well, I think he’s God as well as Jesus, and God’s omnipresence is very much overrated – you can be everywhere, but you can’t do everything at once! He probably had a huge backlog of e-mails or something, and he’s a very busy man. Some might criticise him for not doing enough, but the fact that he’s actually responding to the Beatles is proof that he’s definitely in touch with the people.”

Sources in heaven say that John Lennon is “fuming” that Jesus hadn’t been in touch personally, but Ringo Starr led the rebuttal to the rebuttal by saying that “we lasted longer than Jesus, and we branched out more than he ever did. Look at me – Thomas the Tank Engine – I mean, Jesus has almost zero brand recognition with kids. And look at Sir Paul McCartney – he’s still living off Beatles songs even today! So we’re well bigger than him.”

Marketing brand experts are believed to be in constant contact with Jesus whose brand recognition in the UK is currently lower than some of the guests in Celebrity Big Brother. “Jesus recognises that this could be a long-term issue”, says marketer Hugo Rawdeal. “The UK is basically a no-go zone for him at the moment, and that’s something we’re working on. In fact, more people seem to recognise the Prophet Mohammed, who has a huge marketing budget that we just can’t compete with. But we’re hopeful of a revival.”

Jesus, who recently updated his Facebook status to “bigger than the Beatles”, says that he is “hoping for a comeback” one day, and that he has given up on achieving any kind of popularity with the Jews. In a recent blog post, he said “Not sure what I have 2 do 2 convince that lot, but hey, peace to all men and all that ROFL.”