From chorister to the Communards, from rock star to reverend and classical music to crime writing, the Rev Richard Coles has lived a life of extreme variety. Emma Clegg finds an appropriate diary slot on Good Friday to ask him about some of the highlights ahead of his appearance at the Bath Literature Festival in May.
“I think my CV looks like the work of a fantasist, actually. But it did happen, and I don’t know why.”
This quote from Rev Richard Coles sums it all up really. Let’s run through the edited highlights of his biography. Born in Kettering, Richard Coles was a chorister at school; learnt to play the saxophone, clarinet and keyboards; moved to London in 1980 (mainly to escape the difficulties of being homosexual in Kettering); met Jimmy Somerville and formed The Communards, playing piano/ keyboards.The band had three UK top 10 hits over three years; and Richard was prominently involved in the lesbian and gay movement, as attitudes changed dramatically through the eighties in the face of HIV and Aids. The Communards broke up; Richard went to Ibiza and took ecstasy for months; then studied Theology at King’s College, London (that’s a dramatic transition) and later became an Anglican priest (that too). He was also the inspiration for the character ‘Tom’ in the Bridget Jones novels; he became an Honorary Chaplain for the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers (random?); and found a groove as a presenter and broadcaster on shows including Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live. He has written many books, including five (and counting) in the Canon Clement Mystery series; won the BBC’s Celebrity Mastermind in 2014 (specialist subject the Mapp and Lucia novels of E. F. Benson); did Strictly Come Dancing in 2017 (although was the second to be eliminated for a shocking Paso Doble) and I’m a Celebrity in 2024, coming third. Most recently he’s been touring his Borderline National Trinket show and on 25 May he is appearing at The Bath Literature Festival.
I spoke to the Reverend on Good Friday (I do admit that this felt pretty epic), a slot agreed to fit with his incredibly busy schedule. Even on this Holy Day, after our conversation he was being interviewed for a podcast, then appearing on The One Show and then going up to Scotland on the sleeper train for a wilderness adventure with his partner Dickie Cant.
Referring to the potted summary of his life outlined in paragraph two, I suggest to Richard that becoming a member of a very famous band was less of a lifelong dream and more of a life stage. “Indeed, it was never something I longed for or planned for”, he says, “I was just fortunate that I ran away to London and ran into Jimmy Somerville, who had also run away to London, and he turned out to have a spectacular gift, and I was lucky to switch my wagon to him, really.”
Pop music, soul music, gospel music and religious music are all very related. I think you can sometimes anticipate in song the life you want to lead, but can’t yet
With hits including Don’t Leave Me This Way (the classic soundtrack of the eighties), You Are My World and Never Can Say Goodbye, The Communards were a pop duo, with Somerville up front with his soaring falsetto singing style and Richard energetically pulsing the rhythms on the keyboard. “Jimmy and I had about four years altogether, but in pop music you are practically a veteran after three years, and you’re a golden oldie after four, so it was quite a long career by pop standards. But in terms of life, it was merely a blink. Actually, it was so long ago now, that sometimes I can’t believe that it was me doing it really.”
Jimmy and Richard had both ‘run away’ to London to embrace a ‘liveable’ life where they could feel comfortable with their sexuality and find a grounded sense of who they were and wanted to be. Attitudes around homosexuality changed dramatically while they were in London in the eighties, as the gay community dealt with the harsh reality of AIDS and HIV. “It was the best of times, the worst of times”, says Richard.
“I grew up in Kettering, a little town in middle England, and it wasn’t a place where I thought a liveable life could happen. So I ran away to London, which is rather contrary to my rather timid and conventional nature. I just knew I had to. Then there was this wonderful feeling of liberation, meeting other people and the lives we had and the loves we had, and then all of a sudden that was devastated when AIDS came along and we just dealt with the reality of people getting terribly ill and dying. It was terrifying. I realise now, 35 years later, that we dealt with it as best we could, one bit at a time, really. Looking back with 30 years of distance, those of us still left realise it’s something we haven’t really talked about much, because it was just too difficult.
“I think if I were to permit an expression of pride in what I’ve done, it is to have been part of that movement that really did see attitudes, especially to lesbian and gay people, change so hugely in the 1980s.”
Post Communards – they split up in 1988 – brought a lack of direction and a fair bit of soul-searching. “It was like anyone who has been in a pop band, especially in the eighties when it was so turbo charged – it was very dynamic and exciting, and it changed your life in an instant. And all that stuff needs a bit of handling. Just like lots of people that go through turbulence, I started looking for something which I felt was steady. I was never religious when I was a kid, but I was in the chapel a lot, singing the music and I knew the words, but what I remembered of it was just this feeling of steadiness and calm, and I wanted to connect with that again, so I stepped through a church door, and then everything changed.
“Before that I had a sort of hands-together, eyes-closed view of Christianity. And what I discovered was something much more challenging and much richer and deeper. So I went and studied theology at Kings College London, which was absolutely wonderful. Pretty quickly, the idea that ordination could be ahead of me came into focus, but it was 10 years before I finally did it.”
Richard draws interesting parallels between his time as a popular musician, his experience in the gay community in the 1980s and his role as a priest. “I think that the job of a vicar, which I loved, is to support the good functioning of a community of people, helping to solve their problems and giving a community its confidence and its heartbeat. And I learned the basics of that in the gay community in London in the 1980s. The other thing is that I’ve always liked singing about stuff that offers you the possibility of transformation, and pop music does that. Pop music, soul music, gospel music and religious music are all very related. I think you can sometimes anticipate in song the life you want to lead, but can’t yet.”
Moved by this, I detect the lyrics of You Are My World rising like an eighties phoenix in my head.
Richard has certainly taken on a fair few different lives, but alongside this has always connected meaningfully as a friend and as a priest with the lives of those around him. Richard’s long-term partner and fellow priest David Oldham died in 2019 from complications of alcoholic liver disease and he is open about the pain of this loss. “Yesterday I was in the car and a piece of music came on that was important to me and David, and I felt the sort of grief at his loss as keenly as I did when he died. So it’s just there – it is an absence in my life that can never be filled or forgotten.”
Now Richard shares his life with actor Dickie Cant (who for children of the sixties and seventies, like me, is the son of iconic children’s and Play School presenter Brian Cant). “We have a great life together and we’re discovering every day what that looks like. We’ve both been around the block in life, and we are just off for a week in the wilderness of Scotland.”
The reason Richard is visiting Bath in May as part of the Literature Festival is to talk to the Radio 2 Book Club producer Joe Haddow about the latest and fifth book in his best-selling Canon Clement Mystery Series, A Death on Location. Despite not featuring in his early career, writing has come easily to him.
“I’ve always written from when I was very young – Sherlock Holmes was my first love – and I worked in journalism, and then as a vicar you’re constantly writing. I started writing non-fiction a few years ago, and then two things came together; one was the prospect of retirement and having the freedom to do something new, and the second was wanting to create a place with people. I wanted to create a world, and that’s been continuously really fascinating. When I was a kid, the notion of the priest is ex officio detective, because you always try to figure out why people do things, and so it’s not such a big jump.”
As a writer Richard specialises in exploring the motivations and backstories of all the characters, including the villainous ones. He explains, “I think it just comes with the territory really – you learn in pastoral ministry that nobody is all goody or all baddy, and often when people behave in ways that we find challenging and difficult, it’s because they have been warped by circumstances in their life that they have no control over. Graham Greene used to talk about the ‘tender murderer’, and it’s the sort of mix of light and shade in people and their attempts to find a life that fascinates me. And also, you know, my job as a priest was to be the mediator of God’s grace.”
Moving from crime writer to a celebrity reality show, Richard made another jump when he appeared in I’m a Celebrity last year, and made unexpectedly close friends with social media star GK Barry. “I thought I might find a bromance, but I didn’t think it would be GK, this 25-year-old lesbian influencer!”
“It was much tougher in the jungle than I thought it would be. I kind of thought that there would be a nice shower and a loo, just off camera, but there isn’t. I mean, you really do camp out, but the challenge, of course, is what makes it so enjoyable. It was such a nice group and we had fun and we enjoyed each other’s company. I loved being in the jungle; I loved sleeping under the stars.”
So are there any more plans for character reinventions? “No!” is Richard’s uncompromising reply. “I’ve done enough reinventing really – now my reinventions go into the characters in my books.”
Rev Richard Coles, Sunday 25 May, 4–5pm, The Guildhall, Bath, £25 including book/£15; bathfestivals.org.uk