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And I was very interested in the priesthood.

I think we all appreciate it now just how lucky we are to be in a band like Judas Priest.

I studied with the idea of becoming a Catholic priest.

The best decision I ever made was to become a priest and I think the second best was to resign.

It was about working with other musicians, but more than that it's about exploring musical areas that you could never do with the band you're in, in my case Judas Priest. You could tackle musical areas and lyrical areas that wouldn't be appropriate for Priest.

But this is what I want to do, and it is what I will continue doing until Judas Priest finishes, which, at the moment, I can't see that yet. It could be three years or five years, who knows?

I had to have some balls to be Irish Catholic in South London. Most of that time I spent fighting.

I decided to give up the idea of being a priest before I decided I wanted to be an actor. I considered it for a couple of weeks, really. I'm a young Catholic, do you know what I mean. You're going to consider it.

So I was very close to ordination. I was delighted to be ordained a deacon, which is the last step between, before becoming a priest. But then it all fell apart.

That was my aspiration, so I was there in a seminary with just boys who were studying to be priests. Pretty rigorous schooling; we never got home, we stayed there all year.