WOULD you want this couple to run your diocese? They seem to be very happy with them in St Edmundsbury & Ipswich. The diocesan chief executive, Nicholas Edgell, and his deputy, Nicola Andrews (above), were taking part in a Saturday-night fund-raising event, "A Taste of the 'Sixties", in Ipswich town centre, with food and live music from the 1960s.

But the Bishop, the Rt Revd Nigel Stock, had gone back to a more stylish '60s - the 1860s - for his costume. Almost 100 people were there to raise money for two charities: the Ngara Anglican Primary School, in the diocese of Kagera, in Tanzania; and Talitha Koum, an ecumenical charity set up in Ipswich after the murders of five women in that city in 2006 (News, 3 June 2011; Real Life, 28 October 2011). "Talitha cumi", meaning "Little girl, get up,"is the Aramaic command that Jesus used to bring Jairus's daughter back to life.

Bishop Stock said that the charity was a "very significant ecumenical endeavour to help women who have become victims of addiction, and all the life-destroying things that follow from drug abuse".

A Christian therapeutic community is currently being built on a farm just north of Ipswich, which will give women a chance to get away from the influences that have driven them into addiction and prostitution. "It is a project", the Bishop says, "that is happy to work with people of all faiths and none, without being ashamed of its Christian motivation."