A barefooted bishop in a dressing gown told a choir in London to stop their ‘terrible racket’ and get out of his church.
Jonathan Baker, the Bishop of Fulham, turned up as City Academy Voices were nearing the end of their concert, grabbed a microphone and demanded the performers and 300-strong audience leave.
The bishop, who had also switched the lights off, told those gathered at St Andrew’s Church in Holborn: ‘You are in my house. It’s gone past 10pm and this is a terrible racket.’
As murmurs of disbelief were heard, he repeated: ‘Goodnight. You are in my house – can you leave it now please. Thank you, it’s over.’
The incident was filmed and shared on social media, and has now had more than 400,000 views.
After the bishop moved away from the stage, a church employee took themicrophone and asked the crowd to leave quietly because ‘this is a residential home’.
She was met with boos and jeers.
According to a post under the video on TikTok, the concert was supposed to finish at 10pm and overran slightly due to technical issues. However the space was booked till 11pm.
@Katiegeek wrote: ‘We’ve sang here as a choir numerous times before with no problem!
‘We had the space booked until 11pm – there was no earlier curfew of any kind. The concert should have finished by 10 (given our running order) but tech issues meant we were a little later.
‘BUT we had every contractual right to still be there AND still be singing!!
‘He interrupted in the middle of our last number – turning the lights off and getting on the stage in his dressing gown and barefoot!
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‘There were numerous people trying to talk to him offstage so he will have been made aware that we only had a few minutes left – and that we had every right to still be there.’
She said there were 300 people in the audience who had all paid £20 each to be there.
In the end, choir, who sing classical, choral, musical theatre and pop, walked out while singing Abba’s ‘Dancing Queen’.
‘(It) was supposed to be our encore so we started singing that on the way out – to try and leave the concert on a better note after the utterly BIZARRE behaviour of the interrupting bishop!!!’
Benedict Collins, who was in the audience with his ten-year-old daughter, said he initially thought the interruption was a staged joke.
‘The church willingly rents out the premises for performances, for money,’ he told Sky News.
‘They can hardly be surprised if they take bookings for concerts and there is music in the hall.’
The choir’s director, Leigh Stanford Thompson, described the incident as ‘bizarre’ and said the choir also thought at first it was a ‘comedy act’.
‘We all went out to the pub afterwards and took it all in. Everyone was in astonishment really,’ he told the Guardian.
‘I do find it funny. I’m not particularly upset. We had a really good concert but I think it’s a real shame that we didn’t get a chance to finish.
‘But now looking back, what a way to go out.’
One member of the choir said the bishop’s comment about the singing being a ‘racket’ did not sit well because ‘I think we produce a beautiful sound’.
A diocese of London spokesman told the Guardian: ‘Bishop Jonathan reached out to the organisers on Saturday to apologise for his late-night appearance at the concert, which he now understands had overrun due to earlier technical difficulties.’
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