The police got into their vans and off they went," he says. "Church on the Street was alive. We'd found a way to do church when all the others had closed."

He died two years later, because he damaged himself with alcohol and drugs, and I never told him that I knew, right from the moment I first saw him, that he was the man who raped me.He said: “I have been helping people on the streets for around a decade but COTSM only became a registered charity around four years ago. When I was homeless, on my first night ever sleeping on the street, I went into a church. They had tea and biscuits and stuff. I was shaking, because if I didn’t drink, I could have a fit. They were nice people, but they couldn’t wait to get rid of me.

We feed people outside, and we have maybe 2,000 people come through the doors [of our drop-in centre, The Hub] every week. We’re open every day except Saturday. We have nurses, doctors and a mental health team here.He told Lancs Live: "You know you can't get your head round these things until they happen to you. It's crazy really that they want to make the TV show." I have been fortunate not to be doing really big long sentences. I call it a blessing but on the other hand I think I have done a life sentence in my head. I had many guns. In the world where I was working it was so easy to get firearms."

Perhaps a more formal style might have enabled some better reflections; for the book conceals as much as it reveals. It is a collage of incidents and people from his life. There are enigmatic glimpses of his involvement with drugs and gangs and carrying a gun. He writes about his appalling treatment of his mother — he steals from her purse as she lies dying — his wives and children, though we have no idea what became of most of them. There seems little remorse for many of the lives that he must have blighted. It's been a life of extremes, bad and good, so it's been really strange. Very strange indeed. I didn't even have any kind of faith and really kind of self esteem for myself. Very cold character, so I wouldn't have believed my life would turn out like this if you'd have told me 30 years ago." About six months later I was in McDonald’s. There was a guy who [I could tell] was an alcoholic. I got him a drink and a burger and started talking to him. I ended up getting him into [NA] meetings and he got clean. People say resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. That's what I'd been doing.I somehow drove the car to a nearby industrial estate and, probably for the first time since I was a little boy, I prayed. It was a demand more than a prayer: “God, if you’re real, you’d better help me!” I got no reply. He said: “I’ve met the future king, I’m going to be made bishop this year alone. It’s been a life of extremes and people wouldn’t believe it. A lot of prostitutes come in and we have hair a hairdresser who comes in to do men's hair. Every Sunday, in the middle of all this, I do the church service. It works.