A chart-topping pop star turned vicar has joined the Brighton Festival Chorus, he said in an interview.
The Reverend Richard Coles, who had a number one hit with the Communards in the 1980s before taking the cloth, has joined the 150-strong choir since retiring from the pulpit.
Mr Coles said: “My favourite thing is that I’ve joined the choral society so I’m part of the Brighton Festival Chorus.
“I love the singing and being in the rank and file rather than being at the front doing jazz hands.”
The Festival Chorus was founded for the Brighton Festival 1968 and has partnered with, among others, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Orchestra.
It also has long-standing relationship with the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra – and has made 10 appearances at the BBC Proms as well as being nominated for two Grammy awards. For upcoming performances, click here.
Mr Coles lives between Brighton and Eastbourne with his partner, the actor Richard “Dickie” Cant, son of the late actor and children’s TV presenter Brian Cant. They met in 2022 on a dating app.
The 64-year-old said: “The romance is going great guns. He moved in six months ago.
“But because we’re both away all the time, we’ve probably spent about 20 minutes in each other’s company – so every day, we’ll spend a bit more time together.”
Marriage is a possibility. He said: “We’ve talked about it but, in our time of life, we’re not looking for orange blossom and a bouquet. It’s mostly about the tax advantages.”
Later this year, he’ll be appearing in a four-part Channel 4 series – Oti and Richard’s South African Odyssey – with dancer Oti Mabuse, touring the land of her birth on a road trip.
Having been a contestant on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here – he came third in 2024) – he’s not holding his breath for more reality TV offers but said that he would love to appear on the Traitors.
He added: “Should the call come from the Traitors’ castle, I would of course take it and have a conversation.
“But it hasn’t actually come. I think there are too many whimsical gays ahead of me in the queue.”
Mr Coles may be a retired vicar but he remains involved in his local church – and there have been reports of him standing in at a Rottingdean church.
He misses the contact that he had with children during his time at Finedon, in Northamptonshire, where he was vicar for more than a decade, until 2022.
He said: “I’m still involved with the church but the average age of my church is probably over 70 rather than under 20.
“The new thing that’s happening to me is my friends are now having grandchildren so I’m sort of being renewed as an honorary grandfather, rather than an honorary father, and that’s really lovely.”
The writer, broadcaster and TV stalwart also spoke about weight-loss jabs, having inadvertently run out on a recent trip to Vietnam.
Mr Coles said: “I love Vietnamese food and so I did eat like a pig but I’m fighting back now.”
The “borderline national trinket” – a name coined by his late partner David who felt the famous vicar needed a downgrade after hearing someone call him a “national treasure” – added: “I’m on Mounjaro.
“That’s been very helpful – so I have lost a bit of weight which is good. I just don’t get the exercise I used to get. Also, I like my food and wine. And the trouble is when you don’t like exercise and you do like food and wine.
“I think I’ve lost about 15 to 20 per cent of my body weight which is the target you really need to aim for with Mounjaro. It’s been great. I haven’t had any problems with it at all.
“I was getting there. My neighbours were all on Mounjaro and said it was a wonder drug and signed me up.”
Mr Coles’s latest venture is into children’s books, having penned a series of factual stories in A Heist Before Bedtime.
He has already enjoyed publishing success with his first “cosy crime” novel, Murder Before Evensong, with opening book the Canon Clement series having been adapted for TV last year.
The new book features a variety of quirky true tales from a scammer who sold the Eiffel Tower to unsuspecting scrap metal dealers to the theft of thousands of insects from a bug zoo in Philadelphia – and a succession of bear break-ins at homes in Lake Tahoe, California.
Each story is told in entertaining bite-sized chapters, featuring some of his favourite cons, hoaxes and heists, including the Cottingley Fairies story – the subject of a hoax by two young cousins who set up photographs claiming the existence of fairies – and the 1605 Gunpowder Plot.
Mr Coles hasn’t ruled out writing a children’s fictional book, saying: “The thing I really enjoyed about writing this book, apart from the subject matter, was just trying to imagine what it was like to be kid myself, although some would say there’s not a lot of distance between me as a kid and me now.
“I just really enjoy the company of children. I always loved it when I was a vicar doing school assemblies and getting involved with the Scouts and the Rainbows.
“We had lots of fun doing that – and we had a brilliant panto in Finedon, where I was vicar, which was great.”
He said that he didn’t regret not having children of his own but he did wonder if he would have liked to be a grandfather, adding: “I don’t think I’ve ever particularly wanted to be a parent.
“I would quite like to be a grandparent but as you can see there’s a flaw in that. I rather missed the boat. But I love being an uncle and a godfather.”
His late partner David, who died from alcohol addiction at the end of 2019 while Coles was still a vicar in Finedon, and about whom he wrote emotionally in his memoir, The Madness of Grief, did consider adopting – but it was something that they never pursued.
He said: “At one point I thought about maybe having a kid with a friend but I thought the only way I would go into that was if I was absolutely 100 per cent certain that it was what I wanted to do and felt I could do. But I never really felt that 100 per cent.”
He plans to continue with his Canon Clement murder mystery series, set in the fictional parish of Champton, and also intends to write a novel-length ghost story.
He hopes that his next offering for kids will be a book of children’s verse, adding: “When I was a kid, I loved Spike Milligan’s book of verse for children.
“And I’ve started writing that because one of the things I loved with the kids was doing stuff that rhymed. They really enjoyed that.”
A Heist Before Bedtime by the Reverend Richard Coles is published by Wren and Rook for £14.99. It is on sale now.
