A LEIGH-born artist is being paid £2 million to rewrite the Bible!

Queen's Scribe Donald Jackson, who hails from council house beginnings in Butts Bridge, is to create the first handwritten illuminated work of the modern era -- the first since the invention of the printing press over 500 years ago.

And it all stemmed from a "crazy idea" he had while lecturing at an American college founded by Benedictine monks.

The monumental tome has been commissioned by the brothers from the Mid West, and will take Donald and his team of calligraphers six years to compete.

Donald, 62, a former Manchester Road Secondary pupil -- whose father Wilf ran a cycle shop in Leigh -- still regularly attends school reunions and put goose quill to calfskin vellum on the first illustration last month.

Cousin of Gordon Jackson, chairman of the Leigh Business Partnership, Donald now lives in Monmouth, and describes the commission as his "Sistine Chapel". A former art lecturer, who insists on taking Clapham's pies back to his Welsh base after local visits, said: "This is the best job imaginable, something I've prepared for all my life.

"I've spent most of my time trying to explain my job to people. Now I've become something they can understand -- a bald-headed chap with his backside on a stool, patiently recopying the Bible. It's a daunting task."

The translation being used for the Saint John's Bible is the New Revised Standard Version and it has been blessed by The Pope.

Since the inception of the idea, and the unveiling of the first page, Donald and a team of theologians from St John's Abbey and St John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota, have been working together to plan each unique page of the 1,150 page Bible in seven volumes.

Donald and his team will be working from his scriptorium, a converted blacksmith's store.

He will be inviting leading calligraphers and artists from other countries to collaborate with the team at different stages of the project. As a scribe to the Crown Office at the House of Lords, Donald is known as the Queen's calligrapher and is usually employed writing Royal Charters and Letters Patent.

He developed the idea for the handwritten Bible after lecturing at St John's College and sold it to them over a drink with the director of the Monastic Microfilm Library in Chicago.

He said: "He thought it was kind of crazy but from there the idea took flame."

The Bible will be written on vellum pages which are two feet tall and 32 inches wide.

Each page is drawn up on a computer with a calligraphic script designed by Donald before being hand written.

It takes over eight hours to write each page, but four weeks to illustrate them using antique Chinese ink and precious metals including malachite, lapis lazuli, copper, silver and gold.

Donald said: "This is a 21st century Bible based on a 12th century manuscript, so the script is contemporary and classic.

"I had to design something to reflect the word of God, and it has to be written in such a way that it is not wearing blue jeans or a sweatshirt. It has to have a collar and tie and be respectful."

Donald's project is exciting scholars across the world.

Paul Gehl, calligraphy curator at Chicago's Newberry Library, said: "It's wonderfully mad, an imitation of a medieval thing in a modern age."

Cousin Gordon said: "Donald has done really well for himself, but has not forgotten his roots. His family is really proud of him."