WHILE many of her friends spend weekends socialising in bars, Sam Foster is conducting weddings and delivering sermons.

At 25, Sam has just become Britain's youngest female vicar.

Working at St Oswald's Church, in Fulford, York, she admits some parishioners are surprised when she turns up wearing her dog collar and a denim jacket.

But she loves her job and says it is good to break down people's expectations.

She started going to church at St Oswald's, in Grove Hill, Middlesbrough, aged 13.

She said she was scared at first in case her friends saw her.

When she realised she wanted to be a vicar, she refused to tell anyone for years.

She said: "I thought I was far too young. I can laugh about it now but, at the time, it was quite scary."

She only admitted her ambition when she was 18 and a female vicar came to her church.

She said: "She was a real role model for me. I went to talk to her about becoming a lay minister. But she said 'Why not train as a priest?'"

A former Brackenhoe School pupil, she studied at Sunderland University and spent three years at theological college in Durham.

She spent her 21st birthday at a selection centre for training for the Church of England.

She said: "I was quite frightened before I started as I was the youngest there by far. The vicar at my church had really thrown me in at the deep end and I was doing funerals when I was 21."

Her dream came true when she was ordained by the Bishop of Selby, the Right Reverend Martin Wallace, at her church in Fulford.

She said: "Now I feel complete, as if I am doing what I was born to do."