A bishop has revealed how he spared the blushes of a naked girl in a York hotel corridor when a top-level Church of England meeting clashed with a drunken hen night.

The Bishop of Winchester, the Rt Rev Michael Scott-Joynt, is reported to have come to the reveller’s rescue when he found her locked out of her room at the Park Inn York Hotel in North Street while he and his fellow clergy were gathered for a conference.

The 67-year-old offered her his dressing gown during a Carry On-style episode described by the Bishop of Wakefield, the Rt Rev Stephen Platten, as “the most amusing incident I have experienced at a House of Bishops meeting”.

The Church Times claimed one of the hen party also triggered a fire alarm and caused the hotel to be evacuated.

The Bishop of Winchester is said to have performed his chivalrous act in the early hours of Tuesday during a conference attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and where the issue of women bishops was the main item on the agenda.

The Bishop of Winchester said: “There was a commotion in the corridor outside my room, I went out to investigate and there were two young women there. One was binge-drunk and the other had nothing on and was banging on the door of a room opposite. I went back to my room and wondered what I should do, then went out again and threw the naked girl my dressing gown.”

Duty manager Michael Lacy is reported to have said that nothing about the fire alarm incident was mentioned in the Park Inn’s log book and no complaints were made to him.