The UK has never been big on big. Even Canary Wharf in London, home to the UK's tallest building at a mere 50 floors, huddles on the edge of the city where its towers can safely cast their ballooning shadows over the half-empty streets of nearby housing complexes.
Now one small city in Northern Ireland hopes to make its big mark on the world with its answer to Rio's Christ the Redeemer - a giant 160ft high statue of Saint Columba.
After months of intense bidding for the UK's first supercasino, which went recently to Manchester, it was a breath of fresh air to read on BBC Online last week that Derry City Council is currently considering a bid for a giant sculpture dedicated to an Irish saint who was so central not only to the spread of Christianity in Ireland but also in Scotland.
Ok, so at 160ft it comes nowhere close to the Eiffel Tower which rises - TV mass and all - 1052ft above Paris. But with the monument's planned location slap bang in the middle of the Derry's River Foyle it is sizeable enough to dominate the city and become its defining landmark.
In a city that has had its fair share of divisions between the Roman Catholic majority (nearly 80 per cent) and the Protestant minority, the monument of St Columba has the real potential to unite the city under a positive symbol of the Christian faith that few can find fault with.
