Getting up close and personal with rabbi

HIS dad wanted him to be a boxer and his mum a property solicitor - and Lionel Blue said he "did the dirty" on both of them by becoming a rabbi.

But at 73, the radio and TV personality - one of the first rabbis in Britain to announce his homosexuality - says he is happier than he has ever been.

The Londoner who co-founded the Standing Conference of Jews, Christians and Muslims in Europe, has been a presenter of BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day for 25 years and written numerous books on spirituality, religion, humour and cookery.

A regular on the festival scene, he is also set to get up close and personal with Wyre Forest folk on Wednesday, October 15, as part of this year's Bewdley Festival.

However, life has not always been easy for the witty pensioner who fell into religion via a Quaker farmers meeting and said he would not wish his adolescent years on his worst enemy.

Having grown up in London's poor East End, the honorary Open University doctor went to more than 10 schools and said he actually lost the ability to make friends - a confession which is hard to believe of the larger-than-life adult.

"I went to too many schools," he explained

"I was sent to one after another and just as I was getting settled again I was vacated and I became a rather solitary child and lost the art of making friends.

"But I'm fine now and I've found that life has got nicer for me the older I have got."

He added the last 10 years of his life had been the best but he had also learnt to make the best of his bad experiences which had taught him some valuable lessons.

"During the war we used to take refuge in the shelters and the first thing we did was look out of the window to see if our house was okay and one day it wasn't," he went on.

"And that move made me realise that if you really want security it's not going to be in bricks and mortar and you have to find it inside yourself."

His sense of humour has also been essential for his religious work.

"For many years I was running the Ecclesiastical Court of the Reformed Jewish Organisation and that meant I had to deal with all the problems like divorce," he explained.

"And you need a lot of humour to deal with that and try to persuade people who have just got divorced to try and see if they can give up their bitterness against each other, because bitterness can move you together as much as love."

Lionel cracked at least three jokes within the first 10 minutes of our conversation and even the story of how he became a rabbi while a history student at Oxford University was told with a laugh.

"I had gone to see a girl at her college and it didn't work out.

"She had a stinking cold and I had complete adolescent insecurity, as well as the suspicion I was gay, so it was a disaster and on the way back to college I took refuge from the rain in a doorway," he said.

"The door opened and I was in a Quaker meeting for farmers and I was there and I thought what's a Yiddish boy like me doing here and I was very moved by what happened."

However, adopting a more serious tone, he added: "It turned all my problems inside out and I began to see them not as wasteland but as my spiritual character - because having problems yourself is the only way to appreciate what other people are going through."

However, he added his calling did not match his parents' high hopes for their only child.

"I rang up from Oxford to tell my mum I wanted to be a rabbi and there was a pause and the voice came through and she said 'Lionel you're doing this to spite us, all our lives we've worked our fingers to the bone to get you out of the ghetto - you should be ashamed of yourself'."

He added, without an ounce of bitterness: "She was frightened I would become an old-time rabbi with a big beard and when I assured her I wouldn't have a beard and introduced her to a nice blond rabbi she changed her mind."

Indeed very little of Lionel Blue could be described as "old-time".

The lover of monasteries, who has been with his 77-year-old partner Jim for 20 years, is a big fan of package holidays, cooking and charity shops and hopes to write a novel when he finishes his autobiography in March.

He is also looking forward to his forthcoming sell-out appearance at Bewdley Festival, which he said he expects to have a "sparkle", "bounce" and "family feel" not normally found at commercial festivals.

"It's rather nice to be following people like Sylvia Simms who I have many childhood memories of and PD James who supplies my murder stories, which I enjoy," he said.

"It's nice to feel I'm part of a succession of people like that and it's got a homely character because you're not speaking in a theatre but a hotel or school - and that makes you give your best."

The master of amusing anecdotes added he would be honest with his audience and answer any questions they wished to ask.

"I give a speech in which people can ask anything they like and I tell them that because, at my age, I'm not bashful any more and I'll give straight answers to my questions," he laughed.

"I'll go along with what I feel my audience's interest is . . . there are no secrets to hide."

l Tickets for Bewdley Festival, which starts on October 10 and features a host of household names including television stars Esther Rantzen and Barry Norman, poet Wendy Cope and jazz sensation Stacey Kent, can be obtained by calling 01299 403355.