Tom Tilley on growing up ‘hardline’ Pentecostal: ‘It was weird – it was speaking in tongues’

‘It was brave of Scott Morrison to bring cameras into the church. I respected him for that.’ Tom Tilley's memoir Speaking In Tongues is out now. Photograph: Mark Clinton

It’s not unusual for an Australian journalist to write a memoir – but it is unusual for the memoir to not focus on their journalism at all.

Instead, Speaking in Tongues by former Triple J Hack host Tom Tilley is a family memoir of sorts, that tells of Tilley’s time raised in the Revival Centres – a small Pentacostal church that requires its members speak in tongues. It’s “a personal prayer,” Tilley says. “Using audible, indecipherable language to God.”