Faith kept me out of prison

"I had no church background, left school at 15 with no GCSEs and had read just one book in my life - Charlotte's Web.

"I spent about three months on a youth training scheme as a builder. It was hopeless, just knocking down walls for 20 a week, not building anything.

"Then I was unemployed and going through a sort of crisis anyway when I got a job making shoes. I met an old school friend called Neil who said his life had been transformed, that he'd become a Christian. I thought he'd been smoking something or popped bad E.

"I was ignorant of the Christian faith. But something had definitely happened to him and while I didn't fancy this religion stuff, I went with him to St Mary's, Bushbury.

"I can't remember the hymns or the sermon but I knew something had happened. It wasn't like the Lottery finger pointing at me but I thought 'there's something going on.' I knew my life would never be the same again.

"Next night, the curate, Charles Beresford, brought me a copy of the New Testament.

"He'd worked for years as a tool setter, he was my kind of man. A few years later I married his daughter, Sarah.

"Though I was a churchgoer, I was still Mick who liked a drink and a fag. And even now, I'm still just Mick who happens to have got himself right with God.

"I did my first tattoo with Indian ink when I was nine, outside the King Charles pub.

"The reason I'm here and not in prison is because someone had the courage to say 'I'm a Christian' and to talk to me about Jesus. That's been very close to my heart."