Mike Rimmer spoke with author Andrew Swift

Andrew: Well, I actually went on Wikipedia, and I went and looked for his address. Of course it does not have the full address it just has a partial address on Wikipedia. But I attempted to write to him. Explained what I was doing; and then I got a letter back, so the postman must have delivered it. I got a letter back from his PA saying here it is. Basically it's already written. It was something he had written to appear in another article, and they gave me authority to have it published in my book. We sent him a few copies just to say thank you. Yeh, so we got Cliff Richard and then we got some business people. If you know Billabong the clothing company. There's a guy called Mike Ochsner who's based in California. He's written a piece. In sports we've got someone called Deborah Searle. She rowed solo across the Atlantic. Then we have Richard Mulder for the skateboarders among you. Chris Lenton; he's a rugby player from the Wasps. Pete McKnight. He's based in Loughborough, and he actually trains the Olympic team on conditioning for the runners. Then we have Ben Cantelon from Soul Survivor. Lindsay West. His parents go to our church, so that was an easy one to get. David Hadden, Myles Dhillon, Andy Flannagan and Dave Bilborough. Just to name a few.

Mike: Who was the most difficult to get hold of?

Andrew: Em, I really don't think anybody was particularly difficult. Bobby Ball took a couple of emails to say come on do it. But in fact everyone was very quick to respond. I was really impressed. It must have been a God inspired thing to do, because we had really good responses. Basically we started it in May time 2007. And we finished it by September. So it was quite a quick turnaround.

Mike: What were you hoping to achieve with the book?

Andrew: I really don't know Mike because - in fact all I could see was a book. We've done it. I'm very much of a person who has a vision or a dream or something in life that I want to achieve. I remember being at university and I wanted to open a surf shop. And guess where I opened my first surf shop? In Leeds and there's not a lot of surf there. In fact on the day of opening I had the Yorkshire Evening Post take a picture of me on a surfboard on the River Ayre. Very strange, I was on page three as well!

Mike: So how do you manage to persuade a publisher to publish it if you haven't got an idea of what you could do with it. Because normally publishers like to know what the audience and everything is going to be for a book?

Andrew: Ah well they do. And again I come back to the fact that I really believed it was a God inspired dream and a vision. I went and spoke to my friend Andy Frost; said would he do a foreword. Because of him saying he would do a foreword, I think Authentic had more faith in the project. They initially said that I would have to buy a thousand copies to make it worthwhile. But in the end they didn't do that. I was quite grateful for that because it costs a few bob.

Mike: What I like about it is it's a very good book to dip into because it's just short sharp chapters isn't it?

Andrew: It is and that's what a lot of people say. They call it a toilet book. Yeah so it's very easy to read.

Mike: What sort of feedback have you had so far from people who've read it?

Andrew: Well, quite a lot of people have said to me it's a great evangelistic tool and the reason for that is some of the people in here are very well known, not just in the Christian circles, but in non-Christian circles. Therefore it's good to give to people saying, that guy from Neighbours is in there; that guy from Emmerdale, we have Tom Lister in there from Emmerdale. So a lot of people watch that. So they can say yeah I know him. And some of the responses we have had have been phenomenal. It's been given to someone who's been dying of cancer and they gave their life to Christ two or three days before they died. That's amazing. I mean that's worth writing a book, just for that story. Someone gave their life to Christ.

Mike: What's your favourite story in there?

Andrew: My favourite? I like some of the business stories. And what really surprises me is how many people have been through terrible experiences in life before they came to Christ and before they found their hope in Christ. In fact out of all the people I think only two or three people have been Christians all their lives in the book. And I'm one of them. I haven't had those terrible experiences' and you know a road to Damascus experience of meeting God. But a lot of the people in here have. Some of them are really sad stories. And so I think to answer your question my favourite is probably Mike Ochsner's from Billabong. Yeh I would say that.

Mike: The thing that struck me about it was every story is different, all from different directions. It's quite amazing how God works in so many different ways in people's lives.

Andrew: It is. And also if you notice they're not all from a certain denomination. They're not all Baptist; they're not all Presbyterian or Methodist. Every one of them is from a different stream. That's really interesting I think. Because even though we call ourselves a Baptist or a Methodist, actually we are all in God's family. It's quite an eye opener really.