Here am I, in Owen’s shoes. Will you travel with me?

When the editor of The Southern Cross asked me if I would take over the weekly back-page column from the late Owen Williams, my first instinct was to find some solitary refuge and have a full-blown, no-holds-barred, panic attack.

The very thought of having to fill so vast a void left by a man of such towering intellect and wisdom, not to mention his way with words and mastery of the English language, was both daunting and terrifying.

The prospect of having to step into Owen’s shoes gave my bunions such a fright they had me limping about in pain for a week.

But our august editor, Gunther Simmermacher, is not a friend of the word no particularly when it is used in the context of declining something he has requested.

So, in the interests of worming my way into heaven, I shall, as they say in those movies so often discussed by Owen Williams, give it my best shot.

The brief the editor has given me is to picture myself as a Sunday afternoon visitor to the homes of you, our readers, where over a cup of tea I set out to entertain you, raise issues of a religious nature, discuss our faith, and intersperse all this with anecdotes and stories of our wonderful Church, its saints, its history and its glory.

I told the editor that I didn’t particularly like tea.

Ok then, he said, think of yourself having coffee then.

I then asked him, with what I hoped was just the right measure of the meek reverence one should always accord editors: Is there any chance I could imagine myself as a guest in our readers’ homes in the late evening, perhaps?

Yes, the editor replied, now a little testily. It doesn’t need to be any particular time; it could be morning, afternoon or night. It really doesn’t matter.

It’s very important to me, I said, taking a step backwards in an attempt to keep out of striking distance of the computer mouse which Mr Editor tends to swing above his head, like a cowboy swings his lasso, when his patience is being tested.

You see, sir, I grovelled, bowing my head with a deference which I hoped would pass for humility, if I can imagine myself in our readers homes in the evening, that means I could have a whisky instead of tea, and on the basis that we sell 11000 copies a week, it would mean that I would be more than suitably fortified to overcome my nerves and write a halfway decent column.

Without waiting for the inevitable reply, I quickly asked him what would happen if readers didn’t like my columns.

He smiled with that combination of self-assurance and righteousness that all editors have particularly when they are lounging beneath that sign on their office walls that reads: We might make mistakes, but we’re never wrong.

Whether our readers like your column or not is immaterial. In fact, it would be rather nice for us if they didn’t. You see, they would then all have to buy our book, Any Given Sunday by Owen Williams, of which we still have some stock. Then they could happily read through The Southern Cross, and when they get to the back page they could reflect on the scriptures with Fr Nicholas King, have a crack at the crossword, smile at the cartoon, laugh at the Church Chuckle, ignore your column entirely and pick up Owen’s book and read a column from a real writer.

Actually, Gunther didn’t say that at all. In fact, that entire conversation never took place and was a figment of my imagination (though the brief he gave me corresponds with reality).

But I do have a reason for letting my imagination have free rein, and that is to show that I will not be so presumptuous as to try to emulate Owen Williams.

Strangely enough though, Owen and I did have a lot in common. We both worked as journalists for the same newspaper, though at different times. We both lived in France at different times, he in Villeveyrac and I in Dingy St Clair in the Haute Savoie.

We also were both restaurant and movie critics, but at different times. Owen did it professionally, and I only briefly as an amateur, in an effort to get to eat for nothing and get into the movies for free.

There is, however, one way in which I would hope to emulate Mr Williams: that is to be blessed, as he was, to be able to write this column for almost a quarter of a century without missing a single issue.