Simon Jenkins, editor of Ship of Fools, follows the bizarre chain of events sparked by a Mystery Worshipper report deemed "too positive".

SOMETHING FUNNY HAPPENED to two of our Mystery Worshipper reports earlier this year.

They were both by a new Mystery Worshipper, who adopted the nom de plume of "Freddie". Freddie visited two churches for us. She went to Westminster Abbey for a service of Choral Evensong in March; and then, just over three weeks later, she visited Most Holy Trinity Church in Reading for Easter Sunday.

There was nothing very unusual about the reports, apart from the way Freddie sang the praises of the priest who officiated on each occasion. At Westminster Abbey, she was lavish in complimenting the priest for his beautiful singing. "I was a bit distracted by the voice of the priest vicar," she said. "His singing voice was so wonderful one wanted to turn around and peer down at him in the way that one always looks at singers doing a solo."

Sadly, the owner of this wonderful singing voice was not identified by name. Despite asking, Freddie was unable to find out who he was.

Meanwhile, at the Easter service in Reading, Freddie was awed by the fabulous fashion sense of Fr David Peters, the parish priest. "Fr Peters wore a lovely gold cope for the procession and then changed into a gold chasuble for the rest of the Mass, matching the gold dalmatic of the deacon," said our observer in the back pew.

But in addition to the Anglo-Catholic haute couture, Freddie was stunned by Fr Peters' amazing preaching. "I was told beforehand that Fr Peters was a good preacher and those people didn't lie. In fact, he was one of the best preachers I have ever heard. The congregation are lucky to have him so regularly."

The reports were published a few weeks later, and that was that. Until an email arrived from someone in the congregation of Most Holy Trinity, Reading.



THE EMAIL WAS A COMPLAINT about the church's Mystery Worshipper report. It said that many of the parishioners were angry at the highly flattering portrait it painted of their vicar, who, it said, was rather unpopular with his congregation. "I am afraid to say that there is a widely held suspicion that this review has been deliberately written in an effusive and glowing way for questionable motives and perhaps by someone with a strong vested reason for producing such a good account," it said.

Needless to say, it's a cold day in Hell when a church complains that their Mystery Worshipper report is too positive, and can we please remove it.

The email went on to say that the parishioners had been angered at the glowing account of their vicar in the Westminster Abbey report, and were now incensed at the report on their home turf, which they claimed was being used by the priest to boost his image in his diocese.

It came as a surprise to learn that the unnamed priest in the Abbey report might be the same person as the named priest in the Reading report. After all, two reports submitted just three weeks apart, giving rave reviews of the same priest and submitted by the same Mystery Worshipper... that kind of thing gives sycophancy a bad name.

We immediately pulled the reports and started to investigate. Just a few hours later, we received an internal mail from "Cosmo", one of the long-standing members of our bulletin boards. Cosmo was a colourful and contentious poster, with plenty of friends and enemies on the bulletin boards, and he wanted to know what had happened to the Reading report.

He wrote: "I was sent an email by a friend this morning telling me that the rather good MW report about my church had been pulled for 'anomalies'. It was nice to have a good MW report but obviously it's less nice if there are question marks about it, presumably about its authenticity. If there are any doubts then do please have it deleted as I wouldn't want anybody to think it's fake or a misrepresentation of the parish... All I know is, it wasn't me guv!"

Cosmo's message was our second big surprise in 24 hours. Although it had been known for a long time that Cosmo was in fact Fr Peters, this was the first time he had broken cover to confirm it. We wrote back to ask if he had officiated at the Abbey service, as our parish emailer had claimed, but he said no:

"I didn't see that MW report when it came out but, after a bit of searching around (Google is so often our friend) I found a cached report which was, to say the least, interesting reading... As it happens, I was due to be on duty that day at the Abbey but I was unable to go and passed it on to another Priest Vicar (there are a number of us as you no doubt know). So, no, I was not there that day."

So we went back to our parish emailer. Fr Peters had flat-out denied officiating at the Abbey service. So how could the church parishioners claim that he did? It turned out they couldn't possibly have missed it. Fr Peters had published the Abbey report in full in the parish magazine of St Mark's Church, Reading, and had identified himself as the priest in question.

"I hope that this month you will forgive a moment of pure self-indulgence," he wrote (click here to see the actual page of the magazine). "As you know, I am a Priest Vicar of Westminster Abbey and, once a month, I take my place in the rota to be the officiant at Choral Evensong. Thus it is rather a surprise to me to find that this latest report has me as the unnamed Priest Vicar... Do ignore her over-the-top praise of my singing voice..."



WE DECIDED TO DO SOME technological digging to find out what had been going on. The fact that Freddie, our Mystery Worshipper, had given no name for the priest in the Abbey report was starting to look rather convenient. Had we been hoaxed?

Freddie was a new arrival as a Mystery Worshipper, and she had also registered recently on our bulletin boards. When we checked her registration details, we discovered something very unusual: she had chosen the same distinctive password as another member. Further checking revealed that she and that member were also using an identical computer address on the internet. In other words, their postings were made from the same computer. This other member was called Mowll's Disciple.

Mowll's Disciple had been on the boards for five years, and was rather famous for posting flattering remarks about... Fr David Peters. We looked through all the surviving posts of Mowll's Disciple and found some striking instances of his flattery, including remarks about Fr Peters in action at a church service in Reading in 2004...

"Fr Peters was the celebrant and, as always, sang the Mass beautifully. He has one of the best singing voices I have ever heard from a priest... After Communion Fr Peters changed his cloth of gold chasuble for a cloth of gold cope and the altar was dressed for Benediction."

These comments about singing and fashion are so close to the observations in the two Mystery Worshipper reports as to be beyond coincidence. Clearly, Freddie and Mowll's Disciple had the same things to say about Fr Peters, as well as sharing the same unusual password and internet address with each other. The two were one person. This made it look like Freddie's two Mystery Worshipper reports were a PR campaign for Fr Peters, because at the very least, they had been written by an admiring friend.

But the more we looked at it, the more we wondered: Could it be that Freddie, Mowll's Disciple and Cosmo were all one and the same? Were all three screen identities created and run by one person?

What made us look at this was a curious incident which had taken place on the bulletin boards several months ago. Mowll's Disciple had posted a message and signed off at the end with the name "Cosmo". If you were running several personalities on a bulletin board, this would be an easy enough mistake to make. When this happened, several members of the boards openly accused Cosmo of running Mowll's Disciple as a second board identity, but he strongly denied it. Mowll's Disciple was a friend, he said: "I do know who is (indeed I shall be seeing him tomorrow evening in the flesh as he is over from Australia for a week), but he is not I on this board."

We did some more digging in our bulletin board records and found something very unusual. On two separate occasions, Cosmo and Mowll's Disciple posted messages on the same day and from the same unique internet address. In each case, Mowll's Disciple posted merely to add glowing praise for Cosmo.

There is no absolute proof in this sort of digging. But taken together, these strands of evidence raise awkward questions about whether Mowll's Disciple and Freddie could be online alter-egos of Fr Peters. They especially raise a question over the two Mystery Worshipper reports: were they written not merely by a close friend, but by Fr Peters himself?



WHILE WE WERE DIGESTING all that, events took an unexpected twist.

Fr Peters had denied, in writing, that he had officiated at the Abbey service. Indeed, he said he had never even read the Abbey Mystery Worshipper report until we asked him about it, and it was only "after a bit of searching around (Google is so often our friend)" that he had read it.

But in St Mark's parish magazine, he had claimed to be the star of the show at the Abbey, and trumpeted the report as a personal triumph. So we messaged his Cosmo persona, asking him to reconcile these two accounts. His response came within the hour.

"I have only one explanation; foolishness and an attempt to make St Mark's feel a little more important about themselves... when I saw that the Priest Vicar hadn't been named I saw a chance to put it in St Mark's parish paper (I include one MW report a month) and make them feel a little more important that they have a Priest Vicar of the Abbey as their Vicar also... I thought it was a harmless thing to do and would put a few smiles on people's faces."

We'd never heard of a parish priest "caring" for his flock in this way before, and the piety of the reply made us glad we'd read it before, and not after, lunch. We were frankly stunned that he admitted deceiving his parishioners in such a barefaced and public way. Fr Peters went on to insist on his version of events: "But I do reiterate that it was not me at the Abbey that day... I was due to be there but could not and so passed it off to another Priest Vicar."

All this talk of "Priest Vicars" reminded us that Fr Peters is not an ordinary, humble parish priest. He carries his extensive liturgical wardrobe not only to Westminster Abbey once a month, but also to important Anglo-Catholic shrines in places as far-flung as New York, Sydney and Cape Town. So deceiving his local flock adds an interesting item to what has, until now, looked like an impressive CV.

When we contacted Westminster Abbey, they stood by their man. They were not able to document who officiated at Choral Evensong on the night our Mystery Worshipper visited, as no official note was made about any switch in priests. But they satisfied themselves that another Priest Vicar substituted for Fr Peters at Choral Evensong. On the question of how Westminster Abbey views a Priest Vicar who misuses the report of a service in his parish magazine, the Abbey would only comment: "It is for David Peters' parish and diocese to deal with in the first instance."

Meanwhile, Oxford Diocese gave us the following statement: "Fr David Peters has admitted his foolishness in misleading the congregation of St Mark's about having taken the service in Westminster Abbey. He has since spoken to the churchwardens and Standing Committee of St Mark's and apologised to them, and they have accepted his apology. He has also spoken with the Archdeacon and his Bishop and apologised to them.

"The Diocese takes such matters seriously and is keeping the situation under review. Meanwhile, his Bishop is offering support to Fr Peters at this difficult time.

"The facts surrounding the Holy Trinity Reading report continue to be disputed."

We gave Fr Peters the opportunity to put us in touch with Freddie/Mowll's Disciple, so we could clear up once and for all the question of whether he or she exists or not. We reasoned that a close friend and admirer of Fr Peters would stand up and be counted in a heartbeat, knowing the predicament the good Father was in.

But Fr Peters responded by saying he cannot produce Freddie/Mowll's Disciple, as he does not know them. This is curious, as in a previous tight spot, Fr Peters had claimed that Mowll's Disciple was a friend from Australia.

Fr Peters has also offered the explanation that he keeps open house, and lots of people, including friends and colleagues, have access to his computer. However, if he thinks a friend or colleague has betrayed him by using his computer, and has got him into such hot water, why doesn't he find out who it was and get them to confess?

The question therefore remains: did Fr Peters write his own, glowing reports? Or did a shadowy disciple do it, allowing Fr Peters falsely to claim the spotlight in his parish magazine? We leave it for you to decide which explanation is less weird.



WHAT ABOUT THE Mystery Worshipper project itself? This episode has made us look more closely at who our Mystery Worshippers actually are, and how their reports are submitted. All our Mystery Worshippers are now required to give us their full contact details, including postal addresses and phone numbers, and they are required to declare that the people reviewed in their reports are not personally known to them.

With apologies to Westminster Abbey and Most Holy Trinity, Reading, we have now placed a warning on both reports, which can no longer be considered genuine in any sense.

See this statement from St Mark's, Reading, issued on 22 October 2006.