God’s gift to the women of Notting Hill! The Old Etonian vicar-on-wheels whose mobile services (and film-star looks) have made him a social media hit

• Reverend Pat Allerton, 41, from Notting Hill, has been sharing prayers and hymns
• Travels on tricycle equipped with speakers powered by petrol-fuelled generator 
• Clergyman studied divinity at Edinburgh University and was  ordained in 2010

Try to imagine a typical vicar and you won’t call to mind anyone like the Reverend Pat Allerton.

For a start, there are the undeniable good looks. And the on-trend wardrobe — few men of the cloth team their dog collar with black jeans, a bomber jacket and Nike Air Max trainers.

Throw in an Eton education, a dash of schoolboy rebellion and a wariness of churches — ‘I find them quite claustrophobic at times’ — and it’s clear 41-year-old Reverend Pat, as he likes to be known, is an unconventional clergyman.

So perhaps it’s not so surprising that, with the nation’s churches closed during lockdown, he has been travelling the streets of his West London parish and beyond on a tricycle equipped with speakers powered by a petrol-fuelled generator, sharing hymns and prayers.

Reverend Pat Allerton, 41, from Notting Hill, has been travelling the streets of his west London parish during lockdown to share hymns and prayers

His flock have dubbed him ‘the portable priest’ and he has a burgeoning fanbase on social media — one recent outdoor appearance attracted five million views (and counting) on Facebook.

But if you spend any time in Reverend Pat’s company, it is soon clear he acts from the heart. Why else would he be here in a windy corner of the capital, under ominous grey skies on a weekday evening, to preach love and togetherness?

‘I have just felt the calling to go out there,’ he says. ‘At the very least, I thought what I was doing could be a distraction during lockdown, and at best it might be uplifting. It’s a way of saying you don’t have to go through this alone.’

I am in Notting Hill, not far from the church where Reverend Pat is vicar, to witness him in action.

He arrives by car — I’m disappointed to hear the rented tricycle was returned last week — but it is an appropriately humble 17-year-old Volkswagen Golf.

He opens the boot and lifts out two hefty speakers, the generator and a tangle of wires.

It is a lot of kit and, with just a few uninterested-looking mums dotted around the playground in the square where we are standing, the omens don’t seem good.

Reverend Pat raises his microphone and gives a short sermon, stressing the need for love and solidarity, then turns on the music. And as his speakers blare out a powerful rendition of Amazing Grace by the American singer Judy Collins, a small crowd gathers and people start opening their windows to listen.

At the end, after he has invited us all to observe a moment’s silence, then join him in reciting the Lord’s Prayer, there is applause and enthusiastic shouts of ‘thank you’ from the crowd of 70 or so who have gathered.

I genuinely have goosebumps and I am not alone: a middle-aged woman who has sidled up alongside me says she has, too.

‘A lot of people have been really touched,’ Reverend Pat tells me afterwards, when I join him for a cuppa in the tiny patio garden of his vicarage, a terrace townhouse not far from his church.

Reverend Pat, who worked as a curate before joining St Peter’s in Notting Hill as a vicar in 2017,  travels his  London parish and beyond on a tricycle equipped with speakers

‘I’ve had so many lovely messages from people of all backgrounds and faiths, from Muslims and Jews to atheists and agnostics. A lot of them say: ‘I’m not religious but it really moved me, so thank you.’ ‘

Reverend Pat has followed an unconventional career path. He and his elder brother Will, now a landscape gardener, grew up in Winchester, the sons of Jeremy and Lindy, respectively a fund manager and a successful model-turned-dress shop owner.

It was a privileged upbringing that he says was ‘dreamy’ until his parents’ separation when he was ten. ‘I love them both dearly but it was hard,’ he says.

He was then a pupil at Summer Fields prep school, in Oxford, before proceeding to Eton at 11. But his spiritual awakening came later, in his late teens.

‘I had a really happy time there [at Eton],’ he says. ‘I made lifelong friends.’ But by his own admission, he was something of a rebel — ‘quite naughty’ — who was not averse to under-age drinking and the occasional spliff. ‘I did like flirting with danger,’ he admits.

Having dropped out of Eton’s choir because ‘it wasn’t good for one’s reputation’, he dreamt of becoming a fighter pilot or a surgeon. But at about the age of 17, he began to contemplate the significance of his existence.

‘My best friend, Dave, was quite a strong Christian and he started taking me to church and Christian Union,’ he explains. ‘And over time, what I was hearing started to make sense.’

His road-to-Damascus moment came shortly before A-levels, when he attended a week-long Christian camp. ‘I had this revelation that Jesus was alive among us,’ he says.

‘I went to bed that night and prayed to God to know Him. And the only way I can describe it is that it was like falling back and being caught by Him.

‘I remember waking Dave to say ‘I think I’ve become a Christian’. That’s how I came to my faith.’

Not everyone was thrilled. Some schoolfriends were mystified by his transformation from minor rebel to evangelist, and his mum struggled at first with her once- secular son’s conversion.

‘But she is a big supporter now,’ he says. 

After studying divinity at Edinburgh University, he worked at London’s Holy Trinity Brompton church and did youth work before taking time out to pursue a more worldly career for a while, on the advice of one of his mentors.

A law conversion course followed, then a stint in financial PR. ‘I pulled on a shirt for a year and a half but I was pretty rubbish at it,’ he says with a laugh.

After deciding he could resist his calling no longer, he was finally ordained in 2010 and worked as a curate before joining St Peter’s in Notting Hill as vicar in 2017.

With his chiselled jaw, swept-back hair and the trainers, I imagine he must have caused rather a stir among the hundred-strong congregation when he arrived.

‘I do get a lot of people saying I don’t look like a vicar,’ he admits. ‘But to that I reply: ‘How many vicars do you actually know?’

‘I do accept, though, that most vicars are about 75 and balding, so I don’t fit that mould.’

He does not. In fact, rather predictably, some fans have taken to calling him ‘the hot priest’ after the character played by Andrew Scott in Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s award-winning TV series Fleabag.

That title was initially ‘claimed’ last year by fellow West London vicar, the Rev Chris Lee, whose 60-second online sermons caused a stir among Christians and non-believers alike.

Could Reverend Pat be knocking Reverend Chris off his perch? He winces at the thought. ‘Look, I’m flattered, but it does make me feel awkward,’ he confides. ‘That is not any motivation of mine.’

Which brings me to my next question. He is still unmarried . . . is there a prospective Mrs Reverend Pat? That, it turns out, is a work in progress.

‘Throughout my 20s I was pretty certain about who I was going to marry. But when that didn’t work out, it took a while to reset my radar,’ he says carefully.

‘I’ve had several long-term relationships since and there is a new girlfriend on the scene, so the future is looking bright.’

His most recent romantic interest may face some competition, though, to judge from the reaction to his portable preaching. Many of his growing number of Instagram followers are female.

It is now 12 weeks since the day, towards the end of March, when he had the idea to take his sermons out into the world.

‘It wasn’t about forcing faith on anyone,’ he stresses. ‘I thought it would be nice to give people a moment, a shared experience, when they were stuck at home.’

He had managed to get the

speakers out of his church, so when his diocesan bishops suggested he should get a tricycle and combine preaching with his daily permitted exercise, the scene was set.

His first outing was to London’s fashionable Portobello Road, where he played Amazing Grace — chosen for its message of hope — before inviting people to join him in the Lord’s Prayer.

‘I didn’t know if I’d get rotten eggs thrown at me,’ he says, ‘but there was a ripple of applause and people said: ‘Please come back’. So I did other streets, then a friend suggested going to hospitals.’

Unable to enter hospital buildings because of the corona rules, he pulled up instead outside Charing Cross Hospital in Hammersmith and played Amazing Grace again.

‘I didn’t know if anyone could hear it,’ he admits. ‘But someone came out of their house, filmed it and put it on Facebook. And it went viral.

‘I also had a lot of lovely messages. One nurse said she was at the bedside of a patient dying from Covid-19 and it had brought her to tears. And one mum had just given birth to her baby — named Grace — when she heard it.’

The 64 outings he has made since, including stops outside hospitals, a care home and a prison, have garnered hundreds more grateful messages. The venues vary but the script is the same: a hymn, shared silence, a short sermon, the Lord’s Prayer.

Not everyone loves it. On a visit to South London before the petrol generator arrived, one woman emerged from her house and unplugged his extension cable mid-hymn. Undeterred, he shouted the Lord’s Prayer instead.

‘Funnily enough, her daughter then got in touch on Instagram to say she was so sorry, her mum was a good person having a bad day,’ he recalls.

Mostly, though, the reaction has been hearteningly positive, especially in recent days, with the protests and counter-protests since the death of George Floyd.

‘Amazing Grace seems especially relevant now,’ says Reverend Pat. ‘It was written by a man who used to be the captain of a slave ship, then went on to become a clergyman. So what better message of hope and God’s love?’

I wonder how long his unconventional excursions are likely to continue.

‘If the Lord wants me to keep going, I will,’ he says. ‘Though I don’t believe in outstaying your welcome.’

I’d say it’s a safe bet that even when churches reopen for services, the portable priest will still be in demand.

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