Rose Hudson-Wilkin: could she be the Right Rev? Hudson-Wilkin is also a chaplain to the Queen, and has a certain stately grace of her own, which she is going to need if the expectations prove correct. "I have no ambition to become a bishop," she says, insisting that she would neither seek nor expect the job. If there are people sitting around, men and women, dying to be bishops, then they must have very sad lives. I really love what I do now. I lead a very fulfilled life. I adore being in my parish and I can't imagine swapping that for sitting behind a desk. How does it feel, then, to be widely spoken of as a favourite for promotion? I am deeply uncomfortable with that. She has to say that, a cynic might think. But Hudson-Wilkin has the right kind of experience, and a background that would allow the C of E to send out a positive message about itself. With her close-cropped hair and long earrings, and the lingering trace of a Jamaican burr, she has the knack of making people feel the Church might have a place for the likes of them after all. This week is likely to be bad for the Church's image, though, as the arguments rage in the Synod again. Under the current proposals, a code of practice will say that parishes not wishing to be led by a woman bishop can ask for her permission to go to a man instead - probably one of the so-called flying bishops, who have been travelling the country ministering to those with objections since women were first ordained nearly two decades ago. It's a compromise that female priests have learnt to live with, despite the fact that more women than men are taking holy orders. However, some traditionalists want to go further. They have proposed an amendment to the legislation that will mean not having to recognise the authority of the women at all. Hudson-Wilkin and others believe this will undermine female bishops and create a two-tier system in which they have less authority than men. I would not like to see women becoming bishops in a way that changes the nature of the episcopacy. Some say the change could save the Church from splitting, but she thinks it's too late for that. The Church is desperately trying to hold everybody together, and we haven't understood that this is not going to be possible. To try to do that is to put on a sticking plaster that is going to curl at the edge and fall apart. It cannot be sustainable. The whole thing is a mess. We need to say, as a Church, 'We ordain men and women. Full stop. All the way to the top. For those who feel that they can't live with it? They're adults. By all means, go to Rome. Join the Ordinariate. Don't stay and make demands of the Church. It's wrong. Hudson-Wilkin has played the long game to get to where she is now, having been just 14 years old when she felt a call to the ministry. I was growing up in Montego Bay. Women's lib was not part of my life. I simply had this overwhelming sense that this was what I was called to do. Of course, the Church said, 'No, you're a woman. My reaction was, 'That's silly. This is how God made me. So I simply said, 'God, you've called me, so you've got to make it possible." " She came to Britain to train at the Church Army college in the West Midlands, where she met her husband, Ken. He followed me back to Jamaica and we got married. They now have three grown-up children, and Ken is the chaplain at Holloway prison. She was ordained in 1994, the year the first women became priests. Now one in five are female, but then they faced a hostility "way beyond the cosy picture portrayed in The Vicar of Dibley." When I first arrived at my parish 14 years ago, I remember a guy saying that I needed to prove to him that God had called me. I looked at him and said, 'Absolutely not. I have no intention of proving anything to you. You can either accept me or you can reject me. Well, I lived to see him come to me for pastoral care. This is a woman who takes challenges head on: when funds were needed for church repairs, she and her curate highlighted the problem by staging a rooftop protest. The vicar of Holy Trinity Dalston and All Saints Haggerston serves an area that bears more than a passing resemblance to the run-down, troubled parish in the comedy Rev. "I've seen Rev," she says, a little sniffily. It's a bit risqué in parts, but some of it is identifiable. It's fun, a television programme. She then tells a story that could have been lifted straight from the script. My doorbell will go after one in the morning. My husband will say, 'Rose, don't go to the door. He wants to be the man of the house. I say, 'Darling, but it's my vicarage. It might be someone who wants money to buy drugs, but they will have a story about how the electricity has gone out and they need to feed the baby. So I'll say, 'OK, I'll warm the baby's milk for you. They don't want that. They want money. I have a policy of not giving out money on the doorstep, it makes you a target. Being an inner-city priest is dangerous. Although I am alert and aware of the danger, I must admit that I have been known to go outside in my dressing gown in the middle of the night if I hear someone crying or screaming. Maybe when I come in I might feel afraid, because I know I just did something silly. You go out trusting in the grace of God. The calm self-possession that allows her to do such things has served Hudson-Wilkin well as she has been noticed and given rare opportunities. In 2008, she became a chaplain to the Queen, in which capacity she demonstrates an ability to be discreet as well as outspoken. Her Majesty is a human being, like everyone else. She does have a deep personal faith. She found herself at the centre of a row when she was appointed to the Commons in 2010, because the Speaker and the Dean of Westminster Abbey - who shared the chaplaincy - had failed to agree a choice. So the job - and the salary - were split in half. A white canon got to serve in the abbey and live in the grace-and-favour house, while Hudson-Wilkin was asked to lead the Commons in prayer every day and conduct services in the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft. Inevitably, it was suggested that the Speaker had chosen her out of political correctness. "I worked damned hard on that application form," she protested at the time. What I abhor and resent is that whenever a woman or a black candidate gets a job, you get this political correctness thing thrown at you. Two years is long enough to learn the quieter ways of Westminster, though, and a member of the Speaker's staff is listening in on our chat, so she just says, "Oh, that's old." There's no chance of her being anything less than generous and discreet about the members of Parliament who come to her with their personal and spiritual problems, or to get married or baptised. The MPs that I have spoken with are genuinely there because they want to make a difference in the life of the nation. Otherwise, who would want to be pilloried every day? Wouldn't she like to haul some of them by the scruff of the neck down to her parish to see how people live? She laughs, loud and long, then recovers herself. I will leave that in your imagination. It's obvious why Rose Hudson-Wilkin might tick most of the boxes for those who will choose the first woman bishop. On the one hand, she knows her place. I don't have a right to be a priest, or a bishop, or an archbishop. Nobody has. We are simply called to serve. And on the other, she speaks with a directness that comes from an anger she believes to be righteous. We have argued for many years, but the Church has said there are no theological reasons why a woman cannot be a bishop. I believe passionately that we are all made in the image of God. It is a nonsense to say, 'We've never done it before, so we can't do it now. We have waited long enough.