I stayed in Pefkos on Rhodes a few years back, and the woman who worked in the bar in the hotel was married to the local priest, Father Christos. This guy was a good 6' 5 and built like a brick ****-house. Huge jet balck beard and hair in a long ponytail down to his arse. Wore a floor length black vicar-robe-overall-thing. For a man of God, he was slightly unhinged, appropriate as he looked like a living incarnation of Rasputin. He waqs a great feller, but gave the impression you really wouldn't want to cross him! Got invited to his house one night. Not being in the slightest religious, I wasn't looking forward to a night with a vicar..picked us up in his peugot 106 and then proceeded to drive like a ****ing lunatic to his house. When we got there, one entire wall of his room was taken up by a giant TV / stero system, and the most ear-bleeding sound system I've ever heard outside of a Motorhead gig. He got out the whiskey and put on his favourite film, enter the dragon, follwed by various foregin matrial arts movies. 'Look at this bit!' He'd shout, in an unbeliveably loud voice 'I love this bit! He nearly kicks his ****ing head off!' etc. etc. I was drunk as a skunk by the time we left, having had a great night. He drove us back to the hotel in his car, after having demolished, on his own, a bottle and a half of whiskey. Bonnie Tyler's 'I need a Hero' on full blast. 'I ****ing love Bonnie Tyler!' He screamed at one point. Pissed though I was, I was more than a little concerned that I was hurtling through unlit Greek streets in a car that would never pass a UK MOT, being driven by a drunken lunatic - 'Don't the police ever stop you, father?' I asked. 'If I get stopped, I say I am father Christos! **** off! and they leave me alone.' Took us to his church the next day - totally different. As soon as he walked in through those doors, he was totally quiet and dignified, and you could see in the man that he truly beleived passionately in his God. But once we came out and he locked the door - 'Right! Drinks!' I met a girl a couple of years later in Morrocco who'd been a rep in Rhodes for a couple of summers. When I mentioned Father Christos, she said 'Christ, that madman! He runs Pefkos! Nothing happens without his say so.' Definitely the best charachter I've met on my travels. Easily the most charismatic religious person I've met, and for a man of God he could be pretty menacing too - beleive me, if this guy was Pope we'd all be in church 3 times a week, not out of fera of a higher being, but just out of fear of upsetting 'papa christos'!
