Keeping your teenagers going to Mass can be, as any parent will tell you, an uphill struggle. Which is why I owe a particular debt to the singer and broadcaster, Cerys Matthews. Just when my two were ever more reluctant to come with us to our local west London parish on a Sunday, even for the quickie 6 p.m. Mass, the solo folk guitarist who led us uncertainly in the hymns was joined one evening, out of the blue, by a young woman in a hat who stepped up on to the altar from the congregation.

“That’s Cerys Matthews,” my kids whispered, eyes agog, as if both thinking: “If this is good enough for her …”