Daily Mail (femail) article by Jenny Johnston
Call me old-fashioned, but there is something startling about conducting an interview with three vicars and finding that two of them use the F-word in the course of our conversation
That we cover such subjects as smoking, sex, nightclubs, tipples of choice and cigars in the first 20 minutes - with the subjects of transvestites and lap-dancing establishments yet to come - is another matter.
To be fair, one member of this particular holy trinity does apologise for his language. Father Andrew Wickens - immediately identifiable as a relaxed sort of vicar, on account of his black jeans and natty waistcoat - is, after all, just retelling an anecdote that would seem a bit lame if he had used 'fiddlesticks' in the punchline instead.
Britain's most irreverent vicars: The Reverend from Shoreditch Church, Paul Turp (middle) with Rev Andrew (right) and Rev Matthew
He is laughing about a recent encounter with a bride-to-be whose wedding he was to conduct. On her hen night she went to a nightclub, where Fr Andrew, as she would have known him, was too - on a night out with friends, and minus his dog collar.
'Our eyes met as I walked from the bar struggling to carry three pints and a vodka and lime,' says the vicar of St Botolph's in Boston, Lincolnshire. There was this moment of recognition.
But when the penny dropped, so did her drink. She gave this shriek, said, "Oh f***, it's the vicar", and her glass went crashing to the ground. We tend to get a lot of that sort of thing. Church-goers still don't expect to see their vicars having pints in nightclubs. I think mine still think that I live under a pew at the back of the church.'
Oh, you have to laugh. Or do you? His colleagues' rather more liberal use of the Fword inspires a much more nervous sort of reaction. On the face of it, Fr Paul Turp isn't at all modern or trendy, and doesn't look like the sort of vicar who is likely to shock.
He has been vicar of St Leonard's Church in London's Shoreditch - its bells famously featuring in the nursery rhyme Oranges And Lemons - for 27 years.
Now, you'd be very naive to think that the life of an inner-city vicar these days revolves around garden fetes and afternoon tea. But still, who knew that there would be quite so much swearing involved?
'I don't feel I have to take my dog collar off before I tell people to f*** off,' says Fr Paul, begging the question of why on earth any vicar would need to say such a thing to anyone.
He explains that the last people to receive such a roasting were kids who were on the bonnet of his car. Harsh? Not when he explains what they were doing on said bonnet.
We can't possibly say in a family newspaper, but he does, and, again, it's not the sort of word you ever expect to hear coming out of a vicar's mouth. 'See,' he says. 'If we told it as it really was, no one would believe us. It would certainly never get on the telly.'
Little wonder the scriptwriters of a new BBC drama about the clergy 'sat scribbling furiously' when they shared a few pints with this lot. Fathers Paul and Andrew, and their colleague, Fr Matthew Catterick, were engaged as advisers on the comedy, Rev, which is being hailed as The Vicar Of Dibley for our age (meaning that it's about as far from The Vicar Of Dibley as you can get).
Rev follows the fortunes of the Rev Adam Smallbone (played by Tom Hollander), a well-intentioned and warm-hearted man of the cloth, who is posted to a crumbling inner-city parish peopled by drug addicts, weirdos and 'cassock chasers' who find his sermons arousing.
The Vicar Of Dibley for our age: Tom Hollander stars as Reverend Adam Smallbone in the BBC show
He's an imperfect sort of vicar - 'an anti-hero', volunteers Fr Matthew cheerily - who gets drunk, smokes, talks to God while sitting on the loo, and lies awake at night wondering if it is right to swear at his parishioners - all 20 of them.
Adam is, frankly, a lonely soul, a man adrift in a modern world that wasn't really designed for C of E vicars of the sort we might recognise. He has a wife, Alex (Peep Show's Olivia Colman) who works as a solicitor, doesn't even think of baking cake and has quite a lot of sexual fantasies that involve lifts.
Given that these three vicars have told me that pretty much all the storylines have had their roots in reality, this is one that naturally raises eyebrows.
Fr Matthew of St Augustine's in Wembley, north-west London - the only one of these three who has a wife - goes a little pink and admits that the scriptwriters were 'extremely interested' in what his missus has to say about the lot of the modern vicar.
'The truth is that an awful lot of my colleagues are married to women who are lawyers and GPs. We only take home £20,000 a year, so you really need to have a high-earning wife if you are an inner-city vicar.'
So how true to life is Rev? Very, according to these three. Adam, the TV vicar, is pretty much all of them 'wrapped into one, flawed, character'. They all, they confess, like a drink. Fr Paul - clearly the most maverick of the lot - confesses that the scene where Adam visits a lap-dancing club came from him.
'It's hard to maintain friendships when you do what we do. People want you to be their vicar, not their friend'
'Oh, yes, there is a very well run lap-dancing establishment just across the road here. I've been in there with my dog collar on, to save souls and raise money for the church at the same time. They're very generous with donations. Obviously, I try to avert my eyes.'
When it comes to comedy material for Rev, it's clear that these three could tell stories to keep the scriptwriters going for ten series. They pretty much fall over each other to share their funeral stories.
'When vicars get together, we inevitably try to outdo each other with funeral stories,' explains Fr Andrew, as Fr Paul launches into a lengthy exposition about a coffin 'which was actually leaking'. Then there's the one about the widow who spat at the coffin.
'Then she said, "Good f***ing riddance, you miserable b******. Burn in Hell". I had some sympathy - the deceased was a dangerous man - but they don't teach you how to handle that one in theological college.'
And yet where Rev truly packs a punch is when the pathos soars above the comedy. All three nod in recognition at Adam's loneliness and frustration as he grapples with a seemingly impossible job. 'There's one storyline where he realises he has no friends,' says Fr Matthew.
'I identified very much with that. It's hard to maintain friendships when you do what we do. People want you to be their vicar, not their friend, so you can end up surrounding yourself with other clergy, and it all becomes very churchy. Sometimes, you just want to go and have a pint. It can be a very lonely existence.'
The idea for the programme came when Tom Hollander got talking to a family friend who found his congregation was suddenly, and bafflingly, swelled by young families.
All, it soon transpired, were hoping to secure a place for their children at the local C of E school, which had just been given a glowing Ofsted report, and they needed a church reference. All three of our vicars have been there.
Britain's most talked about new TV show: (L to R) Simon Mcburney as Archdeacon, Miles Jupp as Nigel, Hollander as Adam, Olivia Colman as Alex, Ellen Thomas as Adoha and Steve Evets as Colin
'The first time it happened, I was shocked,' admits Fr Paul. 'This lovely family with two girls attended the church for a year, so when they asked me to confirm that they were churchgoers, so the children could go to the church school, I was happy to oblige.
Once they got in, though, they just stopped coming. Overnight. I was floored. I thought, "Am I that gullible? How did I not see that?" You have to become very good at assessing characters in this role, but it's easy to become cynical. Adam says a line like, "People always want something from you". That can be very true.'
Rev is filmed at St Leonard's, one of the country's most bleakly beautiful buildings. Situated on the junction of two of London's busiest roads, it's steeped in history. Shakespeare is said to have worshipped here, but these days the flock is the homeless and drug addicts. Worshippers? Less so. You could fit half the East End of London into the church.
To be honest, much of their account of what being a real-life vicar is like makes you wonder how the Church of England has stayed in existence. Fr Matthew says that of all his contemporaries from theological college, only half are still practising vicars because of the stresses involved.
'It's hard when you realise that you are lying awake worrying about stones, rather than souls. What we do shouldn't be about keeping the physical buildings going, but so much of it is, and Rev conveys that brilliantly.'
What it also does is shine a light on the 'politics' involved in being a vicar. These three squirm when I ask how the show has gone down with their archdeacons, given that the fictional archdeacon has more than an air of Peter Mandelson about him - and is equally unwelcome when he wafts in from his air-conditioned taxi, demanding exact bums-on-seats figures.
'Ah yes. I did have an email from my retired archdeacon. He was disappointed, but I did stress to him that this was a comic invention,' says Fr Matthew. Not that much of an invention, though, says Fr Paul, who doesn't seem to much like archdeacons.
'Luckily, in real life, archdeacons don't tend to just pop in. When they do come, it's a trauma, though. Mostly when you get the letter informing you of the visitation, you want to wet yourself.'
'I don't think the public would accept something as sanitised as The Vicar Of Dibley. Things have changed'
Then there are the bishops. 'I don't like bishops,' he says, 'Every year you have to fill in forms, and in them my bishop is described as my line manager, which I loathe. Traditionally, one of the roles of the bishop is to provide pastoral care for his priests.
Well, I don't have a pastor, I don't have a friend. I could not just phone up my bishop and ask for help. My bishop is my manager. That's not right at all.'
By now, Fr Paul has stopped making quips. He confesses that, a few years ago, the stresses of dealing with all of this - the bishop, the crumbling building, the drug addicts for whom he has assumed responsibility - brought him to the brink of a breakdown.
The revelation makes Adam's fictional wobbles seem not so funny. 'I came very close to having clinical depression, where you get up in the morning and just want to face the wall,' he says.
'I didn't tell my superiors, of course, because I thought they would use it to get rid of me. And, luckily, I had parishioners who covered for me. But it made me appreciate what a struggle it can be.'
Of course, the truth is that the modern-day clergy - for all their gilded 'more tea, vicar' reputations - see more of the real world than most of us. It was right here, outside St Leonard's doors, that a 'bloody great bomb' exploded on a double decker bus in 1995. Fr Paul dealt with the immediate fall-out, and the aftermath, in the form of ethnic tensions.
In Boston, Fr Andrew led the funeral service for a 14-year-old boy who was stabbed by a classmate. Fr Matthew cites 9/11 as the reason why, in TV terms, Rev had to be 'much grittier than anything that has gone before. 'I don't think the public would accept something as sanitised as The Vicar Of Dibley. Things have changed,' he says. 'There are issues like how you deal with your Muslim neighbours that have to be addressed. I think Rev does this, with humour, yes, but also with a punch.'
What's extraordinary, perhaps, is that all three of these vicars still love the job. 'Oh, it's difficult, and there are days when you want to kick the cat, and you do, but it's still a remarkable privilege to do it. You are with people at the best and worst of times,' says Fr Andrew.
What do their parishoners make of their frankness, though? One of the most interesting questions posed by Rev is whether we actually want to regard our clergy as human. Do we want to know that our vicars swear and drink and have sex - sometimes even with women who don't bake cakes?
'That's a very good question,' says Fr Paul. 'I'm not sure people do. But the fact is that we are human and it's only by being seen as human that we can actually make a difference.
'When I go out to remonstrate with some youths, they have to see that there is a real person under the garb. Otherwise, to them, I'm just a t*** in a strange robe who does weird things with bread and wine. And what use is that to anyone?'
No comments:
Post a Comment