The Reverend Roly Bain, priest and clown

Roly Bain at the Holy Trinity Church in Dalston

The Reverend Roly Bain, who has died aged 62, was an itinerant priest-clown who performed in churches, hospitals, schools, prisons and open-air events around the country.

Dressed in an outsized dog collar, size 18 boots and a red nose, Bain exported his unusual preaching method through visits to America, Europe and Australia, at one time travelling more than 38,000 miles a year. He would proceed down the church aisle on a unicycle and conduct choirs with a pink feather duster.

 He blew bubbles during prayers to represent God’s promises and embellished the Bible message with a fondness for wordplay. “Zacharias of diminutive stature, Was reduced to a state of high rapture”, ran one favoured limerick: “He climbed up a tree, Took our Lord home for tea, And gave back more taxes than Thatcher.”

The service would often culminate in Bain attempting to deliver a sermon while balanced on a slack rope – an elastic cable fixed between two pillars topped with crosses. “It is a metaphor of the wobbliness of faith,” he explained. “It is ridiculous to try and get on and stay on the rope, yet it’s a wonderful thing.

Though his humour could occasionally be subversive – he claimed to have thrown custard pies at 10 bishops – Bain enjoyed broad support from the Church. Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, was a patron of the Faith and Foolishness Trust that funded Bain’s ministry.

Bain saw the clown’s work as part of a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. His inspiration lay in the holy fools who would expose the weaknesses of earthly authorities, especially in the New Year celebration of the Feast of Fools, at which the lower clergy briefly assumed power over their superiors.

He also recognised the power of the clown to express vulnerability, giving the audience a space in which difficult feelings could come to light. The words of the Magnificat – “he put down the mighty from their seats and exalted the humble and meek” – were thus given life, he wrote: “and I suspect there is as much, if not more, need for this means of truth telling as ever there was”.

One of triplets, he was born David Roualeyn Findlater Bain on January 18 1954. His father was Richard Findlater, a theatre critic who had written a biography of the great 19th-century clown Joseph Grimaldi. His mother, Romany, was a freelance journalist. Aged eight David read a biography of the celebrated English clown Coco, which kindled his desire to become an entertainer.

Faith initially led him on a different path, however, and after St Paul’s school in west London he read Theology at Bristol University. He continued his studies at Cuddesdon theological college in Oxfordshire and was ordained in 1978. Four years later he helped to set up Holy Fools, an organisation for those interested in the clown ministry.

He resigned his parish in London in 1990 and spent a year at Fool Time (now Circomedia), a circus training college in Bristol. Having mastered juggling, high-wire balancing and the art of the pratfall, he devised his own make-up for his performances as “Holy Roly”: heavily rouged cheeks and a red nose, with a black cross on either side of the face. Like all professional clowns in Britain, his clown face then joined the official registry – made up of painted eggshells – at the Holy Trinity Church in Dalston, east London.

Roly Bain was the author of Clowning Glory (1995), a how-to guide for aspiring performers written with fellow Anglican Patrick Forbes, and of Playing the Fool (2001), a memoir. In 1994 he was named Clown of the Year by Clowns International.

Roly Bain married, in 1984, Jane Smith. They had two sons.

The Reverend Roly Bain, born January 18 1954, died August 11 2016