ARCHBISHOP Desmond Tutu credited people from Golders Green with preparing him to help vanquish apartheid in South Africa.

Speaking at a celebratory service at Golders Green Church in West Heath Drive on Sunday, Archbishop Tutu had the congregation in peals of laughter and rapt attention with a warm-hearted sermon, later blessing them in his native language of IsiXhosa.

He said it was a great joy and privilege to have been invited to come back to help celebrate 100 years of the parish of St Albans.

He said he was “bowled over” by the “amazing love” he had experienced when he arrived with his wife in 1962 to be the church's vicar, to find a fully furnished flat with food in the cupboards.

“You helped us to prepare for the ministry that we were going to carry out in South Africa,” he said.

“You were part of that, you enabled us through having to minister here when it was almost exclusively white, you enabled us to know that that there were quite a few white people that were not nasties.”

“You helped to exorcise from us a hatred of white people for the things they were doing to us in South Africa, so thank you, thank you.”

Archbishop Tutu, now the Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, returned to his homeland in 1967 and became a vocal opponent to apartheid.

Later he chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which aimed to provide justice and a sense of closure for victims of the regime without wide scale prosecution of its perpetrators.

He joked about his getting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 - the second South African to ever do so – saying you needed three things, an easy name, a large nose and sexy legs.

But speaking seriously he said he was just a cipher - that people like him only stood out in a crowd when they were carried on the shoulders of others.

Speaking of the feeding of the “paradox” of the New Testament story of Jesus feeding the 5,000. Archbishop Tutu said the miracle could only happen when someone provided the five loaves and fishes for him to transform.

He used the story as as a call to arms, talking about the dangers of racism, Islamaphobia and climate change in Britain.

“Go out and say there are bad Muslims and there are good Muslims, there are good Christians and bad Christians,” he said.

“God is not going to snuff out those racists, those people who have stereotypes.”

He urged people to become the hands, feet, eyes and ears of God and change the world.

“You're going to make the world compassionate, a sharing world, a caring world, a loving world, a happy world.”

The church's current vicar Rev Rex Morton said the visit had been amazing.

“He was such a lovely man and I felt what he said about his time here was very moving.

“He carried a very challenging message that we can be complacent and he did it in a very funny way.

“I feel that many people will think more seriously about those issues now.”