蜜芽传媒

Good Morning.

What鈥檚 your worst wardrobe malfunction?

Well I鈥檒l tell you mine.

One Sunday in Leeds I was wearing a rather ornate gold cloak known as a cope and was processing grandly down the central aisle of the church, singing the hymn at the top of the voice but as I turned and bowed to the altar and began to make my way into my seat a young choir boy whispered in a loud voice 鈥� 鈥淔ather Rob, did you know you鈥檝e got one really big wooden coat hanger hanging from the back of your cloak?鈥�. The coat hanger was 4ft wide and explained tittering going on amongst unusually happy congregation who must have thought I had finally flipped when I tried to shake the coat hanger off.

But wardrobe malfunctions hit a new level this week. The PR machine behind the BRIT awards could never have planned for what would happen when an Armani Cape, two male dancers dressed as demons, a steep mobile staircase and the pop star Madonna combined to close their event.

Tonight, on the Jonathan Ross show, the 56 year performer will say that she suffered whiplash after having to make the rather uncomfortable choice between being strangled or falling backwards when she couldn鈥檛 get the cape off. So down she went in front of millions of live TV viewers across the globe not to mention the inevitable reruns on You Tube.

But Madonna's response, also in the tonight鈥檚 interview that "nothing can stop me" and that the show must go on, brought back my ten years as Actors Church Union Chaplain to the London Prince of Wales Theatre in the 1990's.

People used to say to me, what did the job involve? And I used to try to explain that there is a kind of intrinsic spiritual dimension to any kind of live performance, unparalleled now in a digital age, which stirs up in many performers a belief that this really is worth doing in order to provide enjoyment to the audience as well as an often perverse exhilaration experienced by the performer under pressure. And believe me, they like to talk about it. Many need to talk about it.

Some of the conversations I have had with leading actors, dancers, musicians and even sportspeople have left me in little doubt that many of them have a kind of spiritual veneer which accounts for the cool beneath the heat of the unscripted live moment.

They taught me and helped me to be more confident to communicate what I believe and to be prepared for the unexpected because for people of faith it is often not easy and frequently difficult to publicly profess 鈥� be exposed 鈥� for what you believe.

And that resonance extends to the firm belief that you can always get up off the floor, dust yourself down, and start all over again.

First broadcast - February 28 2015

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