IT SEEMS that the Revd Matthew Burns, of Holy Trinity, Rhostyllen, in St Asaph diocese, can never quite make up his mind whether he looks better with a beard or not. He tends to grow one nearly every year, he tells me, and shaves it off a few months later. So it seemed a good idea, when they were fund-raising for some electrical repairs on his Victorian Gothic church, and his beard had been in place for seven or eight months, to have a sponsored shave.

The deed was done one evening, in church, by a well-known barber from Wrexham, who, Mr Burns says, first gave an entertaining talk on the history of barbering and all that the barber-surgeons used to do.

When it came to taking off the beard, it was a proper wet shave, with all the necessary towels, and it took place in the church because there was more space for the audience. The event raised a healthy £450, and, for the moment, Mr Burns remains beardless. But not for ever. "Perhaps I'll start again next year," he told me.