I wish … Aziraphale (Cumberbatch) and Crowley (Hiddleston) from Good Omens. Crowley - known

I wish … Aziraphale (Cumberbatch) and Crowley (Hiddleston) from Good Omens.

Crowley - known as a serpent called Crawly prior to a name change following an unfortunate incident involving a man, a woman and an unidentified fruit (traditionally long held to be an apple) - is a demon, but not the kind with the Baron of Hell flaming eyes, trident and all the other traditional demonic trappings. Crowley is the kind of demon who would inflict mobile phone network outages, VAT and the M25 London Orbital on the world. In this respect he considers himself more of a “big picture” demon than his peers and superiors, preferring to bring a large number of souls a little closer to Satan than to consume completely one person.

Crowley shows a healthy disdain for the anachronistic methods and narrow-sightedness of his colleagues, particularly in the way they communicate with him (which often involves inserting their words into the vocal track of a Best of Queen tape which hadn’t been there a couple of weeks ago). He feels that Hell could learn a lot from humans, specifically their computer warranty agreements (a copy of which he sent to the Immortal Soul department with a note saying “Learn, guys”). As such, his closest confidant and possibly even his friend is a bookshop owner, and angel, called Aziraphale.

Crowley’s hand has been subverting history since time immemorial (or 4004BC, anyway) but his most prominent appearance was in Good Omens at around the time of the almost-Apocalypse.

Crowley drives a 1926 Bentley, which he adores, to the extent that he continues to drive it even while it’s on fire. Any tape left in the car for more than two weeks turns into a Best of Queen anthology. He wears sunglasses a lot.

Aziraphale - An angel of Heaven. There are three things people always assume upon meeting Aziraphale: 1) that he is English, 2) that he is very intelligent, and 3) that he is gayer than a tree full of monkeys high on nitrous oxide. However, heaven is not in England and angels don’t have genders unless they try, very, very hard. But one out of three isn’t bad.

Aziraphale was the original owner of the flaming sword, and was meant to use it to guard the eastern entrance to the Garden of Paradise. However, pitying Adam and the pregnant Eve, Aziraphale gave the sword to the humans. It finally ends up in the hands of War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Aziraphale has been a ‘field agent’ for Heaven for thousands of years, and due to being more in touch – and having more in common – with his opposite number than with his colleagues in Heaven, he has developed a rather flexible Arrangement with Crowley.

He runs a bookshop in London, where he only sells a book when he absolutely must. He is an expert on prophecy books, and possesses a few copies that have inscriptions dedicated to him