BEHOLD the olive-skinned man with the broken nose and shock of white hair. Find him in your front room at 4am in 13 days’ time and you might be forgiven for hitting him over the head with the sherry bottle.

Don’t. It is Father Christmas as you have never seen him before. Scientists have reconstructed the face of Santa Claus. The three-dimensional image of St Nicholas, the 4th century Turkish saint who became Father Christmas, has been produced by an anthropologist at Manchester University who is more used to reconstructing the faces of murder victims.

Caroline Wilkinson created a simulated clay model of the saint on her computer, using x-rays and measurements taken from his skull and bones in the 1950s.

An anatomist was given access to his tomb by the Vatican half a century ago when repairs were being carried out to the crypt in the church at Bari, southern Italy, where his remains are kept.

Computer technology was used to build the image of the saint’s face. Experts then studied paintings of religious leaders on Orthodox icons and decided to add a white beard trimmed to 4th century fashion. What emerges is the face of a man aged 60, 5ft 6in tall and with a heavy jaw.

Wilkinson said yesterday: “We used clay on the screen that you can feel but not physically touch. It was very exciting. We did not have the physical skull, so we had to recreate it from two-dimensional data.”

She added: “We are bound to have lost some of the level of detail you would get by working from photographs, but we believe this is the closest we are ever going to get to him.

“He has an interesting face. It is quite masculine-looking and the broken nose gives him character. He is not like the Santa Claus I grew up with as a child, but then that was an image given to us by Coca-Cola.”

The saint’s bones are now becoming the subject of a dispute. The Santa Claus Foundation, based in Turkey, is demanding their return to St Nicholas Church in Demre, southern Turkey, where Nicholas was the Orthodox bishop.

In 1087 a band of Italian sailors smashed their way into his shrine in the town and took the bones as a holy relic.

Muammer Karabulut, chairman of the foundation, said this weekend: “We are just trying to close a page in history. What happened in 1087 was a theft. We are trying to put that right.” The Italians say the Turks want the bones back only to boost tourism.

The row took a new twist last week when Greek Orthodox priests claimed that they were banned from holding mass in the church in Demre. Karabulut denied there had been religious persecution. “Santa Claus belongs to everyone,” he said. “There aren’t any Greek Orthodox priests here. Saint Nicholas is not an active church. We want it to be open to all religions and denominations, as well as Orthodox.”

Additional reporting: Gareth Jenkins in Istanbul

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