Mark Turnbull's Sunday morning songs of praise has been running on BBC local radio for a month now. And despite the 3.30am alarm call, it's his dream job

IT'S 5am on Sunday and Mark Turnbull's the first into BBC Radio Cleveland in Middlesbrough. There's no need to switch on the lights; he's been blind from birth.

At six he'll be presenting the Sunday morning programme, the three hour God slot - up the stairs, unerringly through a maze of empty corridors, into the studio officially called Cubicle 1A.

"I've been here 11 years, I should know my way around," says Mark, who has a blind man's taste in shirts.

We have known one another a little longer, since the days when he was the Darlington &Stockton Times man in Barnard Castle - train and bus from Redcar to Barney and some pretty memorable market days in the painless little office above the dentist's.

"It's lovely to see you again," he says, as always he does. A truly amazing feller.

His Sunday morning show has been running a month, and he's loving it. "It's my dream job," he says. "I love the music the church has to offer. If I can bring it to people, that's good."

In broadcasting parlance, he drives his own desk. In reality, there's no one else to steer. The requests and the CD labels are in Braille, the top of the hour synchronised by the speaking clock. "Perhaps it isn't a blind man's obvious choice of career, but it's the only one I ever wanted to do," he says.

As usual, he'd been late to bed - concert in Durham Cathedral, extravagant meal, bottle or two of wine - as usual up at 3.30am, fed and watered by his mum and a taxi from Redcar. When he arrives, Radio Cleveland is still switched over to Radio 5 Live, yet another inaction replay of the previous day's football.

"I don't get uptight, but I'm apprehensive because I want it to go well," he says. "It's a really privileged position to be in; I want to be entertaining without ramming anything down anyone's throat."

He once explored the possibility of becoming a Church of England priest. "I shoot a prayer up before I start. It's not my ministry or anything. I have no Christianity to shout about - at least I'm a pretty bad advert for it."

The 6am audience - "congregation," he calls it - is estimated at 2,000 and doesn't include his mum, who's gone back to bed. By nine o'clock they hope it might have reached 15,000.

All the lonely people? "You must never forget them," he says. "Hopefully it might uplift them a little."

The programme begins with The Lord's My Shepherd, its presenter singing gently out of earshot. Mark's also an accomplished organist - a better organist, kettle and pan, than he is a singer.

"Welcome to August 11, particularly if you're a grouse - one day to go," he says, jocularly.

The first hour's his favourite. "No one disturbs me, it's a little piece of heaven," he says, though by 6.45 duty news reader Richard Thomas has arrived with the tea. It may be true what they say about BBC tea.

A large and opulent tin of biscuits is inscribed "Mark T only", for Mark T is a very big lad. Ignoring the eighth commandment, and possibly several of the others, we snitch them from beneath his nose. "The bookies got it wrong again," he tells the Sunday small world, "I made it despite the meal last night."

After 7am there's a recorded thought for the day from Richard Bradshaw, the Methodist minister in Stokesley, live chats with URC minister and Teesside industrial chaplain Ken Harris and with Mike Morrissey, retired journalist and prominent Cleveland Catholic. Mike's endorsing the Catholics' new ministry of welcome. "We swiped it from the Methodists," he says.

Mark's highly professional, sounds occasionally like a Teesside Terry Wogan, works the console expertly and reads the requests by touch. "The trouble with Braille is you can't look too far ahead on the page," he says. "I'm the worst sight reader in the business."

There's also a recorded interview, 18 minutes and two seconds, with human rights campaigner James Mawdsley from Brancepeth. "He didn't have a very nice time in Burma," says Mark by way of Sabbath understatement.

It's varied, informal, carefully considered. Close your eyes and you'd never know he was blind.

Requests range from Washington to Ripon, from a lady who says she's just had her ears syringed and can hear him properly for the first time to another who wants a photograph. "You must be a glutton for punishment," he says.

Music swings from Faure at his best to Elvis at his sanctimonious worst, from Cliff Richard to Thine be the Glory and to pianist Marilyn Baker - "a fellow blindo," he says, announcing her.

The programme, it should be said, is also broadcast in the gents, so that it may never again be possible to hear the charismatists' hymn "Meekness and Majesty" without thinking of an 8am pee at Radio Cleveland.

The other advantage of BBC local radio, of course, is that some ineffable oaf bellowing "I love carpets, me" isn't interrupting normal service between every other breath.

Anne Addison, a producer, looks in early and bright. Mark, who played the organ at her wedding, calls her "Mother". She calls him "Father." It caused all sorts of problems when they had a Catholic priest in.

It ends with Onward Christian Soldiers, the four of us by then in the awakening studio singing our silly heads off, though happily out of range of the audience figures. Ten minutes later we're marching as to the bus station caf across the road, God slot closed for another week.

"I've really enjoyed it this morning," says Mark. Blind faith, if ever.

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