RADIO YORK - The man behind the voices of Radio York

Barrie Stephenson is getting used to the editor's chair at Radio York. Yet if you'd shown him that chair some years ago and said, "Some day, all this will be yours", he would have wondered what you were on about.

He knew no such ambition. Anyway, his chair had always been the one on the other side of the desk. He first sat there when he was interviewed for a job as a contributor to Radio York's religious programme. The station was new, the programme was new, probably even the chair was new.

Barrie contributed to the first Sunday programme, and in 1987 became a religious producer. From there to today is a tale with the requisite number of twists and turns. Yet you have to go back further to get the fuller picture.

Barrie Stephenson is the son of a preacher man, or more correctly a Pentecostal church minister, and religion runs through his life.

After a childhood spent moving about with his roving father, whose ministry took him to Essex, Hertfordshire, Lincoln and Staffordshire then the family settled in Ripon, where Barrie went to the grammar school.

His career with the BBC started in 1967 as a trainee technician. He ended up working on transmitters. He enjoyed the job but left after two and a half years. "I decided to leave the nine-to-five job so I could be more involved in the church," he said. The church he ended up spending time with was the Harrogate Christian Fellowship.

As he told me this, Barrie sat across the table, dressed in dark colours, wearing a black three-piece suit, minus the jacket. His shirt was dark blue. And his voice was deep and modulated, in that broadcasting friendly way. His age, by the way, is 50, not that you'd guess it.

After leaving the BBC, Barrie ended up back in Ripon where he worked in what his CV describes as "industrial and domestic electronics". Think televisions for the domestic part. Yes, the man who now runs a radio station once sold and serviced television sets.

Colour television was the new thing, and as a BBC-trained engineer, Barrie was snapped up. He spent 13 years away from the BBC, moving back when he took up that religious broadcasting job. It wasn't exactly full-time work, but Barrie filled in as best he could. Then he was accepted on a BBC course to train as a journalist, and in 1989 began a three-month stint as a reporter.

"At that time I was nearly 40, so I was a bit of an oddity and I didn't quite fit in," said Barrie. Yet being older than the average reporter had its uses, especially the local contacts he had built up.

He stayed around long enough to be promoted to breakfast editor, a job which sounds as though it should involve cereals and toast, but probably does not. Barrie then moved to Radio Humberside as an assistant editor. He was later sent on a course for potential editors, his potential was spotted, and he was sent back to Hull as the boss, having realised that, yes, he did have ambitions.

Barrie would rather have been given somewhere other than Hull, but he settled in, enjoyed himself and ran the station until last November, when he won that chair in York. He describes his new job as "a sideways move that brings me back to the radio station where my career started".

Barrie lived in York while working in Hull, so without the commute, he now has more time at home with his wife, a teacher. They have three grown-up children.

It used to be that people didn't talk much about religion. Yet Prime Minister Tony Blair has attempted to change that by displaying his Christianity, and Barrie Stephenson, a member of St Michael le Belfrey Church in York, also makes his own religion public.

"It's been an important driving force," he said, recalling his first staff meeting back in York. "I said to the staff, you all know about my Christian faith. I gave them a motto from the Old Testament: 'Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God'."

I asked if his faith had made him more or less tolerant. He paused, but chose the box marked 'more tolerant'.

This is hardly surprising, but interestingly he thinks religion made him less tolerant when he was younger. He says he wanted to convert everyone he met, adding it was just as well he didn't convert too many.

"When I was younger, I saw the world as very black and white," he said, smiling at the thought of his younger self. "But this is the BBC, it isn't the Church of England. You are attempting to represent life across the spectrum."

Ask Barrie what he likes most about radio, and he points to its immediacy. "We hear about something and we can get it on the air."

Speaking up for local values, Barrie pointed out that the BBC's local network has approaching three million listeners, a figure that helps the Corporation claim to have more than 50 per cent of the radio market.

Radio Four is a cause of some jealousy. "All the 39 stations in the country cost as much as Radio Four costs on its own," he said, adding that local radio editors could teach the Radio Four boys and girls a thing or two about saving money.

Costs and listening figures are the radio editor's lot, as Barrie knows. His decision to drop the Dr Rock Show caused a furore, as well as a colourful run-in with our own Dick Turpin. Dick claimed victory, because the veteran rocker will be back for a one-off show over Easter.

That edition will be repeated across the local network on May Day, and Barrie hopes to convince other editors to take the show in the evenings.

He still insists Dr Rock was in the wrong slot and attracting too few listeners. But he'd be happy to see him back in the evenings, if he can win round the other editors and find the money.

"He was getting away from his brief. It was supposed to be about rock'n'roll, but there were comedians in there too. He needs a producer to keep him under control."

And producers cost money - as the man in the big chair knows.