For a couple of summers, my honey and I would entertain ourselves by going to see Morris Cerullo, the sleazy syrup-wearing amerikan televangelist, perform for free at these huge gatherings in Earls Court. Part of the attraction was cruising the market area for religious trash, but we also enjoyed seeing sick people healed, though we never quite got the courage to go up on stage and ask to be cured of our own sins. I remember being surrounded by thousands of people babbling away, speaking in tongues and doing this full-on praying. It was very spooky to witness people being caught up with this mass feeling of holiness, so spooky, in fact, that Simon and me started to get scared, and we left.

Several years later I discover that one of my friends has a secret past as a born again christian. I wanted to know more and my brave and generous pal agreed to an interview.

Can you fell me how you started speaking in tongues?
I used to go to this christian fellowship church that was held in the hall of the secondary school that my sister went to. The reason that I started going was because my best friend from the street, L, her family were very much involved, as were my next door neighbours, who I was also friends with. So the kids that I was friends with were all born again christians.

How old were you?
I was still at junior school when I started going, I was maybe eight or nine, and I went until I was fourteen, fifteen maybe. I was always aware of speaking in tongues going on around me because it was a very prominent part of the service every Sunday. There'd be general prayer going on, where everybody said their own prayer at the same time, so there was this general noise going on all the way throughout the service. It wasn't very structured, there were songs and there was a sermon, but a lot of the service was just individuals standing up and saying stuff, or people saying stuff en masse, following on from a song. After they sang together people would just carry on and babble nonsense, either in English or "in tongues".

When I was younger I wasn't so much involved with the services because the kids used to be sectioned out into Sunday school type things and do these little exercises in pamphlets and stuff, and learn about heroic christians smuggling bibles into Eastern Europe, that sort of thing. I guess I may have done it beforehand but I was baptised as a believer in a swimming baths along with my sister and L. I spoke in tongues after I was dragged out of the water

What did you say?
I dunno. I mean, just anything that can come out of your mouth really. The sort of tongues that I used to do were kind of an imitation of what I had absorbed from standing in a group of people all talking in funny ways. You just learn what is the acceptable noise to be making. It was so much a part of what you did on a Sunday morning in one of those meetings. You did it in the same way as you'd sing your chorus. There'd be words on the overhead projector and you'd sing them, and I would practise my harmonies. I used to enjoy it, and when the song was over you spoke in tongues for a little while and after a bit you had to sit down.

When you didn't do the tongues, did you feel like you'd missed out on something? Like the lord hadn't touched you that day?
I never felt any different singing the songs to speaking in tongues. I didn't suddenly feel zapped with the power to speak in tongues, I just used to do it anyway because it was just what you did, general noise-making.

So do people sound pretty much the same when they babble?
I've absolutely no idea whether it's the same language. People would stand up and do what's called "testifying". People testify about personal experiences they've had where god touched them in a certain way, and people would tell stuff that's really gossip, things you've learnt on the grapevine.

At my baptism somebody told a story about how somebody had been blessed by god to give this testimony in tongues, and then after the service a native american had come up to this person and said that he was speaking in their language. That was the only occasion where I heard a story that indicated that this was a real language. It was often described as just a language of prayer that comes from within you when you don't have the words in your own language to say what you're really feeling. So there's stuff like that where you're standing up and you're so filled with love for the lord, and you want to express it but you can't because your language isn't holy enough, that's the kind of tongues I used to do.

The thing that I never used to do is when you stand up on your own and everybody else would be silent, you'd say something very loud in tongues and everybody else would listen. After a little while, not always but most of the time, somebody else would stand up and say that they'd been given the translation by god and interpret what the person had said in tongues, the message that they were giving to the church. So someone would stand up and babble whatever, and then someone else would stand up and say: "This is about the direction we should be moving in", "We should have a mission", "We should have an outreach thing", "We Should have a crusade in a tent, in a park somewhere". Major decisions were made on somebody's supposed god-given interpretation of somebody else's supposed god-given speech.

How did you feel afterwards?
The whole baptism thing was really emotional, I don't think I cried but I remember feeling as though I'd been filled with the spirit, not that I believe that I was now, and I don't know if I did then, It was an emotional experience, and everybody was really nice to me after it, everybody wanted to hug me and kiss me and say: "Well done, you've been touched by the holy spirit".

Did you get bored of doing it?
I became less and less happy going to the church because there were a lot of things that, as I got older, I started to notice. It was prompted by my sister because she was two and a half years older than me and she was quite heavily involved. She used to point out the hypocrisy of the leadership of the church. You were encouraged to give ten percent of your income to the church. We used to go to this youth group which was in one of the church leader's houses, and this was the biggest house me and my sister had ever seen. These people didn't work, apart from running the Sunday group, they lived on the money that I used to give them. They were mates with Cliff Richard! It didn't seem fair that we were supporting their lifestyle.

Also, as I came into my teens I started thinking more about my sexuality. I was encouraged to study the bible, so I tested out the ground about how it would be to be a lesbian and part of this church, and all the messages I got were incredibly negative. Nobody I spoke to ever said that it would be okay if you never had sex, nothing even as positive as that, it was like: "You're going to hell!" Other members of my family who weren't part of that church were also going to hell. It was incredibly narrow minded.