Richard Coles

At 62 years old, Richard Coles physical status not available right now. We will update Richard Coles's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Richard Keith Robert Coles (born 26 March 1962) is an English musician, journalist and Church of England priest.

Now vicar of Finedon in Northamptonshire, he was formerly the multi-instrumentalist who partnered Jimmy Somerville in the 1980s band The Communards.

They achieved three Top Ten hits, including the Number 1 record and best-selling single of 1986, a dance version of "Don't Leave Me This Way".

He also appears frequently on radio and television as well as in newspapers.

In March 2011 he became the regular host of BBC Radio 4's Saturday Live programme.

He is Chancellor of the University of Northampton, Honorary Chaplain to the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers, and is Patron of Greatwell Homes.

Personal life

Coles was born in Northampton, England. His grandfather was a prosperous shoe manufacturer. The company failed under Coles's father because of the increasing popularity of cheaper foreign imports and the family lost much of their wealth.

He was educated at the independent Wellingborough School (where he was a choirboy) and at the South Warwickshire College of Further Education (Department of Drama & the Liberal Arts) in Stratford-upon-Avon. He later attended King's College London where he studied theology from 1990. Coles was awarded an MA by research from the University of Leeds in 2005 for work on the Greek text of the Epistle to the Ephesians.

Coles is gay. The first person who Coles came out to was his mother, in 1978, when he was 16. He played her Tom Robinson's "Glad to Be Gay" four times before she said "Darling, are you trying to tell me something?" Coles has spoken about the "mental crisis" that he suffered following his coming out, which ultimately led to him attempting suicide and being diagnosed with clinical depression.

Coles lived with his partner, David Coles (né Oldham), in an asserted celibate relationship until the latter's death in December 2019. Following the death, Coles says he had received hate mail claiming that his partner is in hell. The Church of England has allowed priests to enter a civil partnership since 2005 and Richard and David entered into one in 2010. Coles later revealed that the relationship wasn't celibate but he had to promise celibacy in order to maintain his job as a vicar.

His older brother, Andy, a former Metropolitan Police officer, was elected in 2015 as a Conservative councillor in Peterborough and was appointed deputy Cambridgeshire Police and Crime Commissioner in 2016. After a mention in Coles' 2014 autobiography, he was accused of having deceived a 19-year-old political activist into a sexual relationship while he was a 32-year-old undercover police officer in the 1990s and resigned as deputy commissioner on 15 May 2017. This relationship was part of a wider scandal involving undercover police officers in the UK getting into relationships with political activists in this period.

Coles is a member of the Labour Party. He is also a member of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), having become enthusiastic about GAA sports through watching the 2020 TV series Normal People. Family ties led to Coles selecting Cork, Ireland as his county and St Finbarr's as his club. The club responded by sending him a membership card.

Coles moved to Friston, East Sussex in May 2022 to be closer to his friend and former manager Lorna Gradden. He said "I'll be living in a charming 18th-century cottage with a bow window that looms over the street affording a privileged view of my neighbours' comings and goings, as the scent of lavender floats across the village green."

Source

Musical career

Coles learned to play the saxophone, clarinet and keyboards and moved to London in 1980, where he played in theatre. In 1983, he appeared with Jimmy Somerville in the Lesbian and Gay Youth Video Project film Framed Youth: The Revenge of the Teenage Perverts, which won the Grierson Award. Coles joined Bronski Beat (initially on saxophone) in 1983.

Somerville left Bronski Beat and in 1985 he and Coles formed the Communards, who were together for just over three years and had three UK top 10 hits, including the biggest-selling single of 1986, a version of "Don't Leave Me This Way", which was at number one for four weeks. The band split in 1988 and Somerville went solo.

Post-music career and church ministry

Coles provided narration for the Style Council's film JerUSAlem in 1987 and also started a career as a writer, particularly with the Times Literary Supplement and the Catholic Herald. He took up religion in his late twenties, after "the best of times, the worst of times", pop success and the deaths of friends as a result of HIV. From 1991 to 1994 he studied for a BA in theology at King's College London. While at university, Coles became a Roman Catholic and remained so for the next ten years before returning to Anglicanism in 2001.

Coles was selected for training for the priesthood in the Church of England and began his training at the College of the Resurrection, Mirfield, West Yorkshire, in 2003, before being ordained in 2005. After ordination, he was a curate at St Botolph's Church in Boston, Lincolnshire and then at St Paul's Church, Knightsbridge in London. He has been chaplain of the Royal Academy of Music and has also played Dr Frank N Furter in a local concert and has conducted an atheist funeral for Mo Mowlam in 2005.

Coles was an inspiration for the character of Adam Smallbone (played by Tom Hollander) in BBC Two sitcom Rev. and was also an advisor to the show. Coles mentions in his book Fathomless Riches that he is also the inspiration for the character "Tom" in the Bridget Jones novels. In January 2011, Coles was appointed as the vicar of St Mary the Virgin, Finedon in the Diocese of Peterborough.

Since 2011, Coles has been on the board of Wellingborough Homes, a social enterprise providing housing and community support for the Borough of Wellingborough and, after its name change to Greatwell Homes, became its Patron. In 2012, Coles was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Northampton and also became a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2016, he was awarded an honorary DLitt by the University of Warwick. In 2019 he was appointed Honorary Chaplain to the Worshipful Company of Leathersellers.

In July 2017, Coles was elected a Fellow of King's College London and separately as Chancellor of the University of Northampton.

Coles retired as vicar of Finedon on Low Sunday 2022. Looking back on his time as a "half-time vicar", he said: "“How do you do all the things you do?” I am frequently asked, and the answer is by neglecting important things and disappointing people. I was once called in the middle of the night to attend a parishioner’s deathbed and I could not because I was in Glasgow doing Celebrity Antiques Road Trip. I found someone to cover, but it should have been me." He explained: "I will still be a priest, I will always be a priest, and I will minister where I am able. Next month I am going to my first conference of prison chaplains and I hope I can make myself useful as a volunteer with inmates in the criminal justice system."

In April 2022, Coles announced that he retired from parish duties due to the Church of England allegedly increasingly excluding gay couples, and what he described as its "conservative, punchy and fundamentalist" direction.

On 1 November 2012 (All Saints' Day), Darton, Longman and Todd published Coles' book, Lives of the Improbable Saints, illustrated by Ted Harrison, a précis of the life stories of nearly 200 lesser-known saints. The following year, Volume two, Legends of the Improbable Saints, followed.

In 2014, the first volume of his memoirs, Fathomless Riches, was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. In 2016 a follow-up volume, Bringing in the Sheaves, was published.

In June 2022, Coles' debut mystery novel Murder Before Evensong was released. It is intended to be first in a series about Canon Daniel Clement.

Source