The Sistine Chapel in Sussex, 27 years on

“I haven’t done any interviews for a while, I got fed up in the end.”

The Reverend Gary Bevans may have finished his masterpiece in 1993 but people will not stop talking to him about it.

The Goring sign writer was a sprightly 33 when he began painting the world’s only full-sized copy of the Sistine Chapel ceiling in English Martyrs Catholic Church in 1987.

Now a mellowed 65, Gary sees his life’s work as a lifetime away.

“It’s become a distant memory now, 25 going on to 30 years,” he said.

“I estimated at the start it would take me a couple of years to do it. It ended up taking me two years to get to the middle. I got there and I thought ‘I’ve got another two or three years of this’. It consumed me.”

Buoyed by a visit to the Vatican the year before, Gary was inspired to paint his own version on to the Goring Way church’s ceiling.

The fact he had never painted a ceiling before did not deter him.

“I was 33, the same age as Michaelangelo when he painted the Sistine Chapel,” Gary said.

“I never realised that until I was a couple of years into it.

“In many ways I had a harder job than him because the ceiling in Goring is much closer than the Sistine Chapel so I had to get the details just right.

“People jest but Michaelangelo had 12 painters with him. I just had me.”

Michaelangelo reportedly spent four years on the Sistine Chapel.

Gary spent five-and-a-half years dabbing and daubing each evening, a huge commitment alongside his full-time job.

Did he ever get tired?

“It was impossible to do it during the day so I did most of it at night with candles around,” he said.

“I could put some nice music on and paint to my heart’s content.

“I had Gregorian chants on, that kind of thing.

“ I had my kettle up there so I could make cups of tea and that was about it. Just the necessities of life to keep you going.”

Naturally it took a toll on his social life.

Gary’s friends dropped him from their squash teams because of his evenings spent in English Martyrs church.

“Everyone knew where I was, I became an introverted eccentric,” he said.

“My social life died because I was so consumed by this. I’ve always been a bit of a loner anyway so I liked doing these sorts of things.

“I’d come up every night and spend a few hours here.”

Even before Gary had finished his masterpiece, TV channels from across the world flocked to film him putting the final touches on the ceiling from his scaffold.

“It got media attention from across the world because I was the only person to do it, which never really occurred to me,” he said.

“They’d always ask the same questions about how it felt.

“One thing I was always asked was if I painted it lying down, which would be physically impossible. You’d drop your brush and that’d be it.

“It was all done standing up, which really hurt your neck. After 20 minutes I’d be finished.

“It took six or seven months to build up the strength in my neck to paint for a few hours. I was like Schwarzenegger.”

When the copy was finally complete, the offers came flooding in for Gary to replicate his replication.

“I had lots of offers by then, about six or seven different churches,” he said.

“It would’ve taken me 35 years to do it all, so I walked away.”

Tourists will once again flock to the Goring church when it opens to the public in April.

But does Gary ever regret his decision to put down the ceiling brush?

“I always wanted to do a New Testament ceiling with the apostles and all the miracles in the middle,” he said.

“But I couldn’t do that now, so I suppose I’ll have to be happy with this one.”