The founder of the Samaritans has called on the organisation to set up a unit to deal with obscene callers.

The Reverend Prebendary Edward 'Chad' Varah - one of three Companions of Honour in the New Year's Honours List - said it was one of the great disappointments to him that the support network he began in a City of London church almost 50 years ago has abandoned one of its founding principles: to befriend all who called.

Volunteers are trained to terminate 'masturbation calls' on the grounds that they are an abuse of the service and 'not appropriate or beneficial to the caller'.

But Varah, 88, wants to reinstate a special division, known as the Brendas, which he established in 1958 in response to a question left by volunteers in the log books: 'What to do with obscene calls?'

'I wrote: "Befriend them, of course",' said Varah, who divided his volunteers into those prepared to listen to 'pornographic' callers, on the basis that they were not personally the target of the fantasies, and those who were not. That division was abandoned in 1987.

Varah now wants it restored - at least in one branch in each of the 14 Samaritan regions across the country.

Simon Armson, chief executive of the Samaritans, said: 'We are unable to help some people who may want to maintain contact with us inappropriately when they should be moving on and finding a sustainable relationship in their own life.

'But we are trying to keep in touch with society and we will never shut the door on anything.'

The ruling body turned down Varah's proposals to reintroduce the Brenda line three years ago. But Varah's fresh plea will reopen the debate at the time when his visionary contribution is being officially recognised.

Varah has attracted controversy for most of his working life. He was already a well-known champion of sex education for young people when he took the first Samaritan call in 1953.

'My first job as a young parson was to take the funeral of a 13-year-old girl who committed suicide when her period started,' he explained. 'I vowed as a I stood over her grave that I would teach children about sex and I began that night with my youth club.'