“Pop idols?” spat Gabriel, chairman of the Waiting Elite and Nobelist Tribunal (WENT). He perused Remiel’s proposal from the Calling and Ability Matching Executive (CAME).

“Movie stars too...” Raphael patted his halo apprehensively.

Remiel addressed the Souls Hand Over and Exchange Society (SHOES), anxiously adjusting his microphone on the boardroom table. Time, or specifically 1957, was fleeting. Selection of the Exceptionally Called had to be concluded by midnight.

“You're suggesting my physicists will perform, a global peace maker must dance, and literati shall continue as actors?” Gabriel pronounced ‘actors’ with an unnecessarily heavy accent on the first syllable.

“Ack! Ack!” chimed a choir of annoyed beaks and bulls.

“Ah-ah-Artists,” stuttered Remiel. “The committee has named the following cherubic hosts and assigned birthdays to Michelle Pfeiffer, Sharon Stone, Daniel Day-Lewis, Christopher Dean, Michael Jackson, Gloria Estefan and Ma-ma-Madonna.”

“Over my dead feathers!” howled Raphael. “Pauli discovered the Exclusion Principle, Alder developed diene synthesis; Davisson scattered electrons and Joliot synthesised radioactive elements.”

The meeting was going badly. The Grim Reaper stamped his foot.

“Just imagine Robert Cecil, architect of the League of Nations voguing, or Juan Jimenez, the Spanish poet jiving the salsa?” Gabriel swallowed an antacid.

“Consider stardom as an extension of the scientific ex-puh-puh-perience,” suggested Remiel.

“Tomfoolery of this order will haunt us until Doomsday…” Gabriel warned, heating the gum up for the Holy Seal over the breath of a passing seraph.

“Puh-puh-Pius XII also needs shoes next year…” Remiel winced.

Gabriel stamped the Sacred Writ, “Give him ice skates.”