My Italian wife is determined to convert me Radio Maria, on the other hand, which has millions of listeners around the world, and the manic Padre Livio, who sounds as if he has just eaten some kind of weird mushroom, have me out of bed like a bat out of hell. I am not entirely sure why Carla does this to me. It cannot just be to get me out of bed because her aim is to get me to listen. Here's why: I am an Anglican who was confirmed in Canterbury Cathedral but who at some point became an agnostic. My take on God is therefore much more scientific than that of rabid atheists such as Richard Dawkins. I also agree with some of the Catholic Church's stances, such as a clear cut difference between right and wrong. But I could not possibly believe that during the Eucharist the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. And there is no way anyone is going to get me to confess my sins to a priest, not here, not in Italy, where gossip travels faster than a forest fire and the police bug every form of dialogue. Carla is having none of this. Apparently, I do believe in God, she insists, but just do not realise it. And God is, of course, a Catholic. So I must convert "for the sake of the children" and because as the wife of a scismatico protestante, she feels "only half a person." Perhaps she thinks that by bombarding me with Radio Maria each morning, while I'm half-dead to the world, she can brain-wash me into agreeing to convert against my will. Or perhaps she just thinks it's funny. Anyway, there is only so much I can take of Padre Livio at such close range, and then it's up and off to the kitchen to make some proper tea in an old-fashioned teapot with tea leaves, not tea bags. There are large numbers of "ex" communists in the small city of Forlì in "red" Romagna where I live but few immigrants from former British colonies. So getting hold of good tea leaves was hard. But I have found a small shop run by Sri Lankans hidden away down an alley that sells something called "Ahmed" and it is very good. I linger as little as possible over making the tea because naturally in the kitchen there is another radio tuned in to Radio Maria. Then, tea in hand, I slide off to seek refuge in what is laughingly called my "studio," where I log on to my computer in an attempt to catch up on other news. Carla, however, shows me no mercy. Without fail, she will waft in and place one of her spare radios right next to my computer tuned in full volume to Radio Maria. Sure, I could just switch the radio off or throw it out of the window into the garden and with luck it would be mauled by the Bosnian hunting hound owned by Carla's brother, who lives in the same building and got the dog in Medjugorje, where in 1981 the Madonna started speaking every day to six local children, so they say, and has been doing so ever since. But I am a reasonable man and try not to hurt people's feelings. And you know what? Radio Maria does have its plus side once Padre Livio goes off air to eat more mushrooms. For a start it is wildly, no doubt criminally, non-PC which is such a welcome change from the BBC or CNN. And where else could I get to listen to a show called L'Ora di Satana ("The Hour of Satan") in which Padre Amorth, the Vatican's chief exorcist, tells me how to spot the difference between someone who is possessed by Satan and someone who is merely insane? One sure sign of possession, I now know, is if they start speaking in foreign tongues, especially English. And it could have been much worse couldn't it? I could have ended up in Greece. That after all was the original plan all those years ago: to live on a Greek Island. But somehow I never made it beyond Italy, which though full of Italians has yet to go into full economic meltdown. I do sometimes wonder though: how do Greek wives treat British husbands. Read more of our expat guest blogs here