Rev Colin Fuchs

Rev Colin Fuchs is, much to his dismay, the vicar of St Xavier's Church, Swindon. He had hoped for something a bit - oh, I don't know - traditional than this sixties red-brick monstrosity, but then again, you get what you're given, I suppose. As with so much in life.

Colin Fuchs grew up surrounded by money and was quite surprised when he found out that even in the late 20th century, there were people in the world who didn't. This revelation had a profound effect on him and he resolved that he would do whatever he could to change this. After studying Theology at university, he fell in with an evangelical group called God's Botherers, who he ended up funding to a large extent. Here he met the woman who eventually became his wife, Marcia. He is still not entirely sure whether she is the love of his life or one of God's little challenges sent to test him.

When the time came to take holy orders, he found himself drawn towards the Anglo-Catholic wing of the church, to the extent that he ended up as something of an expert on the Turin Shroud, although given what subsequently happened as a consequence of this expertise, he deeply regrets ever getting involved. The one thing in his life that he feels he got completely right was his decision to abrogate any claim to his inheritance in favour of his sister Cressida, although occasionally he does wonder if he could perhaps have done something good with the money, such as keeping Marcia a little happier for example.

It was, of course, his knowledge of the Turin Shroud that brought him into contact with George Burgess when the latter was writing his controversial book Shroud of Ecstasy. To his everlasting shame, he ended up as the dedicatee of that infamous volume, described as 'My Fellow Explorer, the Long-Suffering and Ever-Faithful Viv'. 'Viv' was Burgess's nickname for Fuchs - an elaborate pun based on the name of the polar explorer Sir Vivian Fuchs.