Inspiring life of punk drifter turned Shrewsbury vicar

From a working-class background, he spent years on the sometimes violent terraces of football grounds, practically living in the pub and becoming a skinhead in bleached jeans and Dr. Martens boots.

He did not know where his life was going, but then he found Jesus.

Now, the vicar of Christ Church in Oxon, Shrewsbury, he has put pen to paper and written about the dramatic twists and turns of his life.

Rev O'Brien says he decided to write the book to show people that it is possible to turn their lives around.

"I just want to show people that there is hope," he says.

"In a way, it's as simple yet as potentially life-changing as that."

Even now, Rev O'Brien said he can hardly believe the turn his own life has taken. He and his family are so at home now in Shropshire and David's parishioners are also his friends.

He was born in 1962 in Stockport, Cheshire, which he describes as "working class suburbia".

He says: "My mother had been married before she met my dad and her husband turned out to be an alcoholic. She had eight children altogether, four with my dad who was also a drinker.

"So it was a haphazard sort of life but we thought this was normal I suppose.

"We never really lived anywhere else except when we moved nearer to Manchester. Then my grandad committed suicide when I was about 10. We used the money we got to go on holiday. We went to Holyhead and it was like another world."

David says he drifted into a life of footy on the terraces, of punks, gangs, and saw some pretty vicious and battle-scarred folk.

"I wasn't ever like that, I wasn't really violent, never wore all that facial jewellery or had tattoos," he says.

But a rare foray south to see Stockport play Telford saw him spending the weekend courtesy of the local police who gave him a cell until he appeared before Wrekin Magistrates on the Monday.

He is not proud of the brawls, the endless wasting of time and the underlying threats these gangs were seen to be to others.

But Rev O'Brien also recognises that it was all part of where he came from and a reminder of where he might have been.

"I simply don't know where I would have been if things hadn't changed. Perhaps jobless, still drifting, even dead," he says.

Although he had been in the Army Cadets when he was 14, any thoughts of an Army career had faded by the time he left school and as he wandered into the world of punks and skinheads.

He says: "I somehow had the attitude that there were things a working class lad like me couldn't do, I was in with this crowd and drifted but the energy just drew me in."

Then all of a sudden the clues began to appear. He kept coming across people giving out Christian tracts, read some of them and found himself talking to the bedroom ceiling in a "challenging God" way – like "if you are there, give me a sign".

"All of a sudden I felt a peace and a powerful presence descending on me from above," he says.

"Was this emotion because of my heightened state of stress? Was this happening because I wanted it so much? Was this some sort of emotional euphoria?

"No, because the power wasn't coming from within me, it was definitely coming from above, from outside myself."

And that's when David O'Brien became a Christian, undertaking seven years of training to become a vicar. His church, Christ Church, Oxon, Shrewsbury, will be holding its Christmas Fair at Gains Park Community Hall on December 12 from 2pm.

Shrewsbury's Anglican Bishop, Mark Rylands says Rev O'Brien's story is a real lesson. "This is a book which shows how God can turn lives around. If God can reach the Davids of this world, He can reach anyone."

• Northern Soul: Football, Punk, Jesus, published by Onwards & Upwards, is available now, priced £8.99.