Heard the one about the Benedictine monk who turned to comedy?

You couldn’t make it up. Thomas Jackson, from Shawforth, near Bacup, really was a Benedictine monk – not a very good one, by his own admission - for 25 years.

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Today, at 78, he’s a published author and writes for the variety group Angels on Fire, who have just appeared at Greater Manchester Fringe Festival. Thomas writes about everything from politics and sex to climate change.

His hilarious account of how he finally found love (after a few false starts) with his paediatrician wife Melanie are pure comedy gold.

“I lived in west Wales at the time and there didn’t seem to be many eligible women, so I started advertising in newspapers,” he says. “I met some pretty amazing women, one of whom admitted that she only wanted me for my sperm. Another was a witch who was crazy about cricket and used to spend the Test Match in the nude, casting spells.

“Having been a monk for 25 years I was very naive about sex, but I met a lady called Venus who talked me through it one afternoon in a Birmingham pub. She asked me what item of clothing I should take off first and I didn’t know, so she said: ‘Shoes, silly.’ The pub was absolutely rapt listening to the conversation.”

Having still not found ‘the one’, Thomas blew his last few quid on an advert in The Guardian. He heard nothing, but three weeks later he received a letter from Melanie asking if he wanted a penfriend.

“I thought a penfriend is better than nothing,” he says. “After all that time and effort, she was the perfect one. I got married at 55 and our marriage has been wonderful. In fact, being a monk is great preparation for marriage. Everyone should try it.”

Thomas fell into monastic life almost by accident. His parents sent him to the Catholic boarding school Downside, in Somerset. He studied History at Cambridge University and entered the novitiate at 21.

“I hated it, but I was too scared to leave. I was quite naive and frightened really and the monastery represented security. I went into it for the wrong reasons. The endless liturgy bored me and, although I usually performed the exercises in personal prayer prescribed by the rule, it never meant very much. Eventually I decided that this was not the life for me.

“I sometimes wonder why it took me so long to leave. Part of the reason was that the monastery was quite a mothering kind of institution, and – I’m not proud of this – I was a bit frightened of going out into the world.

“Another reason was that we ran a big school, which I adored. I loved teaching. You can imagine how busy year after busy year just skipped by.

“Anyway, in the end I left. Well, I thought, that’s got shot of all that. But it hasn’t turned out like that because prayer is far more important to me now than it was then. So whatever they taught me must have finally sunk in.

“I don’t believe there’s a God in the sky, but I do believe there is a next life, a cosmic intelligence deep within the universe to which we all belong.”

Thomas eventually became House Master at Downside School, although admits he was too soft-hearted and “lazy.”

When he finally left, he needed to earn a living so set up a tutorial college in west Wales for boys who had failed in mainstream schools. It eventually fell foul of Margaret Thatcher’s education cuts when LEAs stopped sending pupils.

“I was left with a school of pupils that no-one else would take. It was a crazy school of absolute rejects, but it was a lot of fun. There were quite a lot of challenging kids who went on to do well in life. I learned there to distinguish between bad behaviour and schizophrenia. One of the problems at the time was drugs and it became very difficult to handle. I think I probably learned far more than they did.

“Being a naughty boy is largely about getting revenge on your parents that’s why they were all failing their maths GCSEs - just to get their own back. A lot don’t even know they’re doing it. I came to the conclusion that it all happens in the very first years of life. It defines your trajectory in life. So much of what we do is out of our control, which is why the spiritual side becomes so important.”

After getting married in 1993, Thomas started to read hundreds of books and then to write his own - One is Beyond The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins Is Right About God But Not Right Enough. Another is Darwin’s Error – The Poet Who Died.

“Darwin was such a marvellous poet, but in middle age he died emotionally.

“He could not feel anything, which deeply affected his Origin of the Species.

“The beauty of nature just got left out and he presented nature as if it were an extension of Victorian capitalism, dog eats dog, and he got it wrong.”

Thomas has written a pantomime called From Bacup to China, based on the life of JR Pilling, a 19th Century manager of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Bank who conceived the idea - and almost built - a railway from Bacup to China. It will be shown in January at various venues around Bacup.

“One of my big concerns is climate change,” he says. “Scientists are telling us almost unanimously that if we don’t deal with this it will be terrible for our children and no-one seems to be bothered. What’s the matter with people? So I want to use comedy for a more serious purpose other than just making people laugh.

“I’ve certainly had an unusual life. Looking back on it, the monasticism was wonderful. It wasn’t for me and I was very unhappy as a monk, but the cultivation of the internal life was wonderful and I don’t regret it at all.”

• For more information about Thomas and Angels On Fire follow www.thomj.co.uk