The Kiwi wife who shares her husband with six other women

Wife number five is the quiet one. Margo, 36, sits at husband Philip's left elbow and looks silently up at him, wan, even haunted-looking beneath the head-covering that she and the other women all wear.

They are good Jewish wives, as they believe the scriptures demand. They look after their husband. They do not answer back. If he chastises them, it is because they were allowing themselves pride or selfishness.

Philip Sharp, 46, is a plain-speaking rabbi from Hove, on England's south coast. Seven years ago his life was falling apart: his marriage of 17 years broke up, his wife took the five children, accusing him of violence, insanity and paedophilia. He was excommunicated, lost his TV and radio shows and was jailed for taking his children out of school.

But then God came to him in a series of visions. "Philip," he says God told him, "I have made you a king." Not just any king, but a reincarnated Old Testament Jewish king, living in a big crowded house near the motorway overpass in Hove.

The congregation at his synagogue shrunk away: "I knew that intimacy was required of us and I preached that the men should be my sons, the women wives," he says. Soon the last of his "sons" had gone, and now when one dials the synagogue number there is only the burr, burr of a disconnected line. His faith community now gathers in his two-storey, white house: Sharp, his seven wives, the 62-year-old household matriarch Maureen, five toddlers and babies, and a golden labrador or three. The horses that Sharp breaks in are kept at nearby stables.

A BBC documentary screening this week in Britain shows him leading his family in worship from the head of the long kitchen table.

The women raise their hands, look rapt to the heavens. Then it is time to teach them: "The essence of training a horse is getting it to yield. You lot, I can feel you are not yielding, you think I'm going to drag you."

The women weep. Occasionally, when one shows a particularly rebellious streak, he will throw her out for a month or two, until she has learned to return to God.

New Zealander Margo is helping second wife Tracey, 38, move back in after such an enforced absence.

Does she also fear being asked to leave?

"Yup, lots of times, yup definitely," Margo says.

Margo met Sharp when she took a job nannying the children of his original marriage.

Now she has three children to Sharp, all aged under 5. The eldest, a girl, has been handed into the care of 47-year-old Judith. Margo's daughter calls Judith "mummy" and calls Margo "mummy Margo", the same style she uses for all the women aside from Judith.

Judith was Sharp's first "kingly wife", his synagogue secretary until he consummated their marriage in the eyes of God. Then, to her tearful shock and his happy surprise, God told him that Tracey, separated with two teenagers, needed a husband as well. Then came Hannah, Vreni, Margo, Chava and, finally, Karyn. None of the marriages are legally recognised.

"I missed having time with him," says Judith, still unable to staunch the tears. "Things are much better now: in the early days the space next to Philip was a big issue for people; you'd get up to put the kettle on and someone would take your place.

"It's not who he's spending the night with that gets to you. It's the little touch or a tender look that is so devastating."

Now the wives draw up a rota for chores, but not for sharing Sharp's bed. He may approach one of them, they may approach him. Karyn will text message him.

Margo's youngest, a boy, was born little more than a month ago. Would she leave her children behind if, like Tracey, she was told to leave the house? "Yes." All of them? "Yeah, I'd have to."

As she and Tracey see it, the children need a father - but there are always others to mother them.

It is evening, and Sharp and his wives are tired after long days at the horse yards, the trucking business, the second-hand shop, the home. He retires to his bed in the lounge and flicks the TV on to the racing channel.

Karyn, Maureen's daughter and, at 27, Sharp's youngest wife, cuddles up in the bed to his right. Another wife brings him supper on a tray. Margo sits beside the bed, leaning her head against his left shoulder.

Sharp explains that he does not try to help his wives too much, to make life easier for them, to make them happy. They must find that happiness inside themselves.

"If it was just about having all these women I could shag at any time, that would be a cheap and shallow thing," he explains, "but to bring harmony into a household of seven wives, that takes some doing; it stretches you, enlarges your heart."