RICHARD COLES

I think that Christians should have confidence, we have always been part of the mainstream conversation, and if we don't join in often what you hear gets hectoring and mad, just people on the margins.

I still feel a spike of anticipation when 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel' strikes up and, in these andropausal years, I am unexpectedly moved by 'Away in a Manger'.

Generally on a Saturday I come home wreathed in media glamour having interviewed a former Krankie or someone, and suddenly I am back in the world of orange blossom and bells.

In corporate life, I have noticed, it is getting harder and harder to say that things are bad.

I suppose I've always had a very genuine curiosity about religion. I loved the atmosphere of churches, the ethos; I adored Evensong.

I was licensed and installed as 59th Vicar of St Mary the Virgin, Finedon, in Northamptonshire, in 2011.

The thing I worry about with religion isn't to do much with forgetting Christmas. It's to do with religion being angry and violent.

God chooses to arrive among the poor and the insignificant and the politically awkward, so what are we missing when we overlook them?

Food as sport is nothing new. To a vicar, especially, church catering has represented the conduct of war by other means for many years.

I just looked preposterous. It would be 'King Lear' and I'd walk on with Cordelia's dead body in my arms and the audience would hoot with laughter. The only time they didn't laugh was when I was doing comedy.

I can't turn the clock back but I can seek the forgiveness of those I've wronged.

You find you have a lot of friends when you are rich and idle.

Trying to do Christianity properly is tough. Life as a priest is rigorous and disciplined. It involves sacrifices.

I don't have any ambitions. I am looking forward to retiring, or at least having more time. When I was young I wanted more stuff, now I am older, I want more time.

The first Christians were formed by the first Easter into a new community that transcended all other commitments, encompassing the tax collector Matthew, a lackey of the occupying Romans, and Simon the Zealot, an insurrectionist.

Jesus comes among us, in our all division, not to instruct, comfort or inspire but to die. In doing so, He answers the sum of our self-regard, stupidity and cruelty.

In the church I am very accountable, to the parish and the deanery; in the media thing I am not really accountable, I am out there on my own as a sort of busy, recognised religious person.

But it's true I hadn't realised quite how much the discipleship of Jesus Christ would involve keeping up with email.

Grandpa Keith made shoes for Adam Faith and George Best. I was dazzled by such people. As a teenager, I was haunted by the idea of people living glamorously beyond my provincial horizons.

The thought of having sclerosis of the synapses is alarming. I wonder if in later life I will pay the price for having overstimulated my mental apparatus in my twenties.

I got lucky with my parents. They were unfailingly loving and supportive, which gave me confidence about my place in the world.

I was born into the Church of England but in the most nominal way possible you can imagine, so it's Christmas and Easter. And then like a great many clergy in the Church of England I actually got nobbled by being a chorister.

A certain check to the sentimentality and commercialism of Christmas is the cluster of bereavements that often arrives towards the end of the year.

I wanted to put together a Christmas album that went back to the stable in Bethlehem and the source of it all. It kind of gets lost sometimes.

I started playing the piano aged four in an effort to copy Grandpa, who was constantly showing off and entertaining us all, singing comic songs on his baby grand.