A QUARTER past six in the morning may not be when many stop to contemplate life's meaning - or much else, come to that - but it's when Radio 2 has its God slot and Paul Walker puts in his two penn'orth most willingly.

He's been doing Pause For Thought since 1994, records them six at a time - and up to two dozen a year - in London.

"You'd be surprised how many people listen," says Paul. "There was a chap in Bath who swore he was going to commit suicide until he heard me on the wireless."

What he did after Wogan came on at 7.30 has not, of course, been broadcast.

Three years ago, whilst in charge of a church "plant" in Sunderland, Paul was named Britain's preacher of the year by The Times. "I hated having that banner round my neck, people expected every sermon to be brilliant," he says. "There was no level at which you couldn't be better; if you weren't brilliant, you were crap. If they don't bill me any more, I'm happy."

Now he's Vicar of St Mary's in Norton-on-Tees, and the contrast could hardly be greater. St Wilfrid's in Sunderland covered five housing estates near the A19, met for worship in Benedict Biscop school. The altar was a suitably covered pool table, the priest had to put the chairs away afterwards and there was no stained glass, only the greenhouse by the swill bins out the back.

St Mary's, Norton, is among the North's finest old churches, Saxon onwards, much loved and carefully sustained by its parishioners and sought after by photogenic wedding parties.

"It's bizarre how many weddings we get," says Paul, pictured on the Echo's front page the previous week conducting a marriage blessing on the back of a jet ski on the Tees and looking like he'd discovered the true meaning of the fear of God.

The most amiable, most self-effacing of clerics, he had served curacies in Shildon and Barnard Castle, still remembered at St Mary's in Barney for a 20-second sermon consisting largely of the bit from the gospels about hypocrites and sinners having pretty damn carefully to watch their backs.

He will further be remembered for a funeral eulogy, delivered back in Teesdale only last month, at which the deceased - a pub landlord - had asked him to say that while he'd had a good life, he'd been a bit of a bastard.

"I felt a bit embarrassed about saying that in church," says Paul, "but that's exactly what he wanted me to do."

Norton is tagged onto the north end of Stockton, even its duck pond said to be of "significant historical importance". Though there are those who still style it Norton Village, the Vicar's letter in the parish magazine concedes that it's really just a suburb of Stockton, and Stockton a suburb of Teesside. Paul also admits how much he's grown to love the place, though he gainsays its affluent image. "Around the church and the green might be quite wealthy, but that's it. It's still better off than Sunderland, of course."

We attend the 10am service, in the company of the Bishop of Jarrow, 142 communicants and a group of young Germans visiting the Riverside Festival.

Paul welcomes them in their native tongue, carries it off like a past-meister, announces that one of the hymns will be Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.

"Not all of you will be familiar with the words, but you'll all know the tune," he says. It's the German national anthem, but others will have to suggest who bagged it first.

The sermon isn't by the Vicar, winner of awards about which he'd sooner forget, but by the Bishop. The Rt Rev Alan Smithson is an adroitly dab hand, too, though he may have wished for an easier scripture on which to base it than that morning's Old Testament lesson about King David, Bathsheba the bathing beauty and Uriah the Hittite, the unfortunate soldier to whom she was married. David, it may be recalled, observed Bathsheba's ablutions, concluded that she was a bit of all right and had her sent for, though not to discuss the court circular.

When she became pregnant with the king's baby, David had poor old Uriah put in the front line, then ordered the troops around him to withdraw. What was known, perhaps, as a Hittite squad.

"These 3,000 years don't seem to have changed much," said Bishop Alan and attempted, so far as we recall, to explain that some good had come of it all.

Credulity fails to suggest what it might have been, but David's line continues.

Afterwards there are prayers for those whose hunger for sex is distorted, and for those whose hunger is for sex with children.

There are five lots of banns - the wedding march continues - and that splendid hymn about the Lord of Sea and Sky. The bishop is off to confirm a lady at the Butterwick Hospice, across town, the Vicar is fielding a gentle grumble about something or other, possibly the Old Testament lesson.

"As I tell people who complain about the weather, it's no good blaming me. I'm in sales, not management," he says.

It's a line which clergymen everywhere may care to keep for a rainy day: veritably, applause for thought.

l Sunday services at St Mary's, Norton, are at 8am, 10am and 6pm. The Rev Paul Walker is on (01642) 558888.