THE first irony is that the Rev June Robson never wanted to be a priest, didn't believe that women should be priests and was at one time actually a member of the organisation Women Against the Ordination of Women.

"I was a traditionalist," she says. "Still am really."

So the second irony is that she is now doing a very non-traditional job, as chaplain for the MetroCentre, Europe's biggest shopping centre - and loving every minute of it.

Even more unlikely is that when she was invited to the two-day interview for her present job, she was waiting for life-threatening brain surgery and was so ill she wasn't allowed out on her own.

And now here she is, beaming happily in her office, surrounded by holy pictures, statues of the Virgin Mary and photographs of Newcastle United. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, shares a pin-up board with Sir Bobby Robson. Alan Shearer's autograph is framed on the desk. And it all nearly didn't happen...

June was born in Consett and apart from a childhood tendency to dress up as a nun in "blackout curtains and a tea towel", had never thought of the church as a career. She was a teacher until she left to bring up her son and two daughters, husband Len was a maths teacher and then head of special schools, and although she went to church "I was always one of those who shuffled in at the back."

It was her Anglo Catholic background that helped make the idea of women priests seem impossible. "And the stridency of those campaigning for them." On the other hand, she began to find those people campaigning against women priests "rather spiteful" so started to re-think her opposition. "If women thought they had a vocation, who was I to say they couldn't see it through?"

But she still thought it wasn't for her. The first time she stood up in church was simply to lead the responses to help out a visiting priest. ("You can do better than that!" she said in her infant school teacher voice to a bashful congregation.) And before she knew it, she was training to be a lay reader.

The next step was to train as a deacon - until the ordination of women, this was the furthest a women could get and it is, in one way, a typically female role - of supporting and helping the priest. And even though women were by now being ordained as priests, June wanted to be no more than a deacon.

God certainly moves in mysterious ways. Many parishes didn't want a woman deacon unless she wanted to go on to be ordained. So June - still determined not to be a priest - was sent to a parish where they weren't keen on the idea even of a woman deacon. "But in the end, it was actually the parish who pushed me towards ordination."

And still she wasn't sure. "In retreat, the night before my ordination and before conducting my first service, I was so frightened that I'd done the wrong thing. 'I'm sorry, God,' I said, 'But if I've got it wrong, it's an honest mistake.'"

There were no thunderbolts. It wasn't a mistake.

She had gone back to college in her late 40s, which meant temporarily splitting the family. She and her younger daughter lived in Oxford. Len, their son and their other daughter were based in Chelmsford, all getting together at weekends.

When a cyst on the brain first affected her - she collapsed in church and was fielded neatly by a member of the choir - she thought she knew what it was. "I'd given up chocolate for Lent and I was sure it was withdrawal symptoms."

It turned out to be much more serious. The consultant at the country's leading specialist hospital, Frenchay, in Bristol, considered it unique in his experience. They put in probes, cameras, tried to burn the cyst, told her to keep stress to a minimum.

"Then I came as vicar to St Mark's in Darlington and in the first week did four funerals and a wedding." And she soon did some more spectacular collapsing: "Right in the middle of eight o'clock Eucharist. Very stylish."

Thanks to her GP, Ann Whittaker, an "absolutely fantastic doctor", she was back at Frenchay. This time the consultant did a shunt and valve operation - she has holes in her scalp, a tube going down her neck and across her chest "and with 20 staples in my scalp I looked like Frankenstein's daughter".

She recovered amazingly quickly, thanks to the professional skill of surgeons and nurses. "And I really think the power of prayer helped. So many people were praying for me. Not just the congregation in St Mark's, but the Methodists and the people at St Thomas Aquinas."

And now she's in her perfect job - and not just because working in the MetroCentre is a shopaholic's dream. "It is a sort of diaconate in a way - dealing with the community. The church is more than a building. You have to be out and about where people are, where families are. It takes courage for someone who has never been to church, or who hasn't been for a long time to go in. But if they come here and just see me between Marks & Spencer and Next, then I'm approachable. It makes it easy."

And June, with her wide smile and easy manner, is definitely approachable.

She is chaplain for more than 7,000 people who work in the centre, as well as just being there for the thousands passing through each day. Earlier this month, she conducted a blessing for the opening of the new Red Mall. "The service with the workmen was very moving. So many people have such faith and reverence."

Building on her predecessors' work, she brings the church to the people, with services in the middle of the mall. The last one was Harvest Festival. On November 14, there'll be a Remembrance Service, then Christmas carols, a Mother's Day service and one for Pentecost. "We try and put the emphasis on giving, sharing."

It's a warm, very practical, down-to-earth approach, taking people as they are and where they are. And whatever her initial doubts, she knows now she's in the right place.

Her children are grown up and settled - she's a grandmother of two - her husband has eased down into a retirement job, her health seems fine, her enthusiasm for life unbounded.

She recently conducted the funeral of an elderly man who had collapsed while at the MetroCentre. "His wife was lovely and she said to me, 'Thank you for being there when I needed you.' That's the greatest compliment. That's just what I try to do.