One of Kent’s most colourful men of the cloth has died at the age of 79.

Motorbike-riding Colin Johnson began life as a journalist working for local newspapers and BBC Radio Kent before he suddenly switched career to become a priest.

Despite retiring, the High Church Anglican known as Father Colin, still regularly popped up officiating at events near his home in Minster on the Isle of Sheppey until ill health forced him to take life easier.

After complaining of breathing difficulties to his GP, he was admitted to Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham last week for what were thought to be routine tests.

Instead, doctors had to break the news of his death to his widow Lynne.

One of his biggest scoops was when a train crashed through the buffers of Sheerness railway station in February 1971, killing a woman.

He was working on the North East Kent Times and his wife-to-be Lynne was reporting for the rival Sheerness Times Guardian.

Colin later recalled: “I still remember that night well.

“We had planned a nice Friday evening at home when we both spotted a lot of emergency vehicles going past our flat.

“I called the fire brigade and was told there had been an incident at Sheerness railway station.

“We jumped in the car and were greeted by the sight of a train embedded in the side of a taxi on the station forecourt.

“These days the police would have sealed off the area. But we had free run of the place.

“Both of our respective photographers were covering a function at the Wheatsheaf Hall.

“It was before mobile phones so we had to run to get them.

“Although we considered ourselves hard-bitten journalists at the time, the events that evening left us both very shaken.”

In 2003 he quit media to serve God and was ordained at Canterbury Cathedral as priest curate at St Peter and St Paul’s Church in Borden, near Sittingbourne.

He said at the time: “Forty years ago I don’t think I could have dreamt I would be a priest of the church, taking my first sermon.

“It is a bit like passing your driving test because that is only the beginning. It is a long, long path.”

By January 2017 he had officially retired but at the age of 70 he still helped with sermons at All Saints Church in Eastchurch.

However, he was unimpressed when he discovered the church’s boiler had broken down.

As a protest, he instructed the congregation to turn up in hats, scarves and coats and he took along a hot water bottle as a backup.

Just to be on the safe side, he ensured a local press photographer was on hand to record the scene and the resulting publicity helped ensure the boiler was eventually replaced.

Two years later, in 2019, he was back in the news when he shocked a Remembrance Sunday service at Holy Trinity Church, Sheerness, by suggesting the event should be moved to June.

He told a packed congregation: “I sometimes think it would be better to recall the Great War in June, and on June 28 specifically, which just so happens to be my birthday.

“It would also be a bit warmer and probably drier than Remembrance Days I have known.”

He explained that the world had marked the end of the First World War on November 11, the day when the “guns fell silent”.

But he said: “It was the Armistice. It was just a cease-fire. And in some places, it was a fairly fragile cease-fire at that.

“In parts of colonial Africa the fighting continued for several more weeks until news of the Armistice filtered through.

He added: “The two sides met in Paris and eventually peace was declared in the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919.

“June 28 was particularly poignant because exactly five years before, the heir to the Austrian empire was assassinated in Sarajevo which led to a complicated series of treaties and alliances between the European powers which eventually plunged the world into a war in which tens of millions died.”

In March 2020 he allowed himself to be “papped” leaning on his Citroen Picasso as he clambered into his cassock before conducting the funeral of his mother-in-law after changing rooms for clergy were closed as part of Covid restrictions at the Garden of England crematorium at Bobbing.

He commented: “I realise certain measures must be implemented in the current coronavirus crisis but some of these seem a little Draconian.

“I wasn’t expecting to have to clamber into my cassock in the car park.”

He became Sheppey’s go-to vicar for ceremonies needing a religious input and in October 2022 he was called on to conduct the dedication service for Sheerness RNLI’s new all-weather lifeboat the Judith Copping Joyce at Queenborough.

He said: “As an erstwhile scuba diver of many years I have reason to be grateful to the RNLI and the lifeboat service generally, not that I ever needed their services, but for everybody else who goes out on the water it’s good to know that they are there.”

Colin went to Borden Grammar School in Sittingbourne but left at 15 to work on a local newspaper.

He leaves his widow, Lynne, and a daughter Clare Solberg and son-in-law Courtney, who live in the USA.