AS a rebellious teenager, David O’Brien wore Dr Marten’s boots, bleached his hair, fought on the football terraces, loved listening to angry punk music and spent most of his spare time in the pub.

He admits the closest he got to worship was on a match day Saturday afternoons at Old Trafford.

“I used to drink too much and get into trouble at games,” he said. “My church then was the Stretford End at Manchester United.”

He dropped in and out of jobs in factories and supermarkets without having much direction.

“I wanted society to stop and think about an alternative idea,” he said. “I wasn’t an anarchist but punk gave me an energy.”

He did not know where his life was going, but then he found Christianity.

Now a vicar in Shrewsbury, the Reverend O’Brien, who studied Theology in Blackburn, said: “When you put on a dog collar, people assume you’ve had no life before.

“But the passions that got me into punk are still there, and that’s what I bring into ministry now. It’s about a desire for meaning I think.

“I simply don’t know where I would have been if things hadn’t changed. Perhaps jobless, still drifting, even dead.”

The Rev O’Brien will be appearing at the Grand, Clitheroe in the New Year when he will talk about the dramatic twists and turns in his life covered in his new book, Northern Soul: Football, Punk, Jesus.

He recalls a tough and unforgiving childhood in Manchester.

“I was an illegitimate child,” he said. “My dad was an alcoholic whom I hadn’t met since I was four and my mother was a single parent who had eight kids, although she lost two of them.

“She brought the six of us up by herself.”

Growing up, he says, Christianity was irrelevant to him.

“I thought church was for nice, middle-aged people like Thora Hird,” he said. “I remember carol singers coming into the pub one Christmas and, like everyone else, I was drunk and barracking them.

“One day when I was on the dole and had just got my giro, I went to the pub with a mate until we got chucked out – at 3pm in those days.

“We were walking through the woods when we saw an occult sign cut out of the ground; the rumour was that a coven was using it for black magic.

“I’d had a bit to drink, so I jumped into the middle to see what happened.

“It was weird, I didn’t feel right afterwards. It frightened me and got the cogs turning with the question: what if there is something else out there?

“So I picked up a copy of the New Testament that had been on the shelf for years, collecting dust, and I felt better after reading it. It still took me three years to get inside an actual church.

“I had this nagging thought for the next decade: ‘Become a minister. Become a minister.”

“So I enrolled and completed a degree in applied theology and six years ago, I became a fully-fledged vicar.

“I haven’t got my punk vinyl anymore, but I still enjoy listening to punk music whenever I can.

“It’s a reminder of where I’ve come from.”

David O’Brien in conversation, Clitheroe Grand, Wednesday, January 18, details from 01200 421599.