As Scotland’s first deaf minister, with a parish which spans thousands of square miles, stretching from Perth to Shetland and Aberdeen to the Outer Hebrides, she has spent years transcending difficulties and overcoming obstacles, boosted by her faith, her friends, her cherished hearing dogs, and insatiable zest for life in and out of the pulpit.

It’s a long time since the Yorkshire-born Rev Whittaker was gaining an honours degree in London, prior to devoting herself to Christian Studies at Aberdeen University.

But wherever she has travelled, and whether earning a black belt in kickboxing, creating a BSL choir, singing sea shanties with a group of her colleagues in lockdown or being ordained into Lossiemouth as the first Deaf British Sign Language user in the Church of Scotland, she has flung herself into the fray with unfettered enthusiasm.

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