I'm a Celeb's Richard Coles: 'The Barrs [GAA club in Cork] sent me a membership card'

The multi-talented Richard Coles, currently appearing on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here, has been a pop star and a vicar, as well as having an affinity with one of Cork's most famous GAA teams 

Richard Coles. Picture: Matt Crockett

A couple of days before I speak with Richard Coles, he has been out bopping with a host of other celebs at London’s Albert Hall in London for An Audience with Kylie Minogue. Now here we are on Zoom discussing the merits of Gaelic football and hurling. The contrast sums up the English musician turned vicar turned author, broadcaster, Strictly contestant and whatever you’re having yourself — he is a veritable magpie of occupations and interests.

Coles, 62, had a short but memorable stint in The Communards as a multi-instrumentalist alongside vocalist Jimmy Somerville, scoring a smash hit with the song Don’t Leave Me This Way in 1986. They parted company in 1988, with Coles taking an unlikely turn towards religion, becoming an Anglican vicar in 2005. 

Now retired from the priesthood, he is busier than ever, co-hosting a podcast with Charles Spencer (yes, the brother of the late Princess Diana), and writing well-received ‘cosy crime’ novels. He has also embarked on live tour which takes the audience on a journey through his extraordinary life. 

He is particularly pleased to be taking it to Dublin, especially given his Irish roots and his support of the county’s Gaelic football team. The social media platform formerly known as Twitter was alight during the summer when he tweeted about settling down to watch the All-Ireland final between Dublin and Kerry with his famous neighbours, the psychotherapist and writer Philippa Perry and her artist husband, Grayson Perry. 

Coles credits the TV adaptation of Normal People and particularly Paul Mescal’s skills for his interest. “I was watching Normal People and I thought ‘oh, football’ out of the corner of my eye. Then it was ‘oh, he’s picked the ball up’ and that was how I got into GAA. My mission is to bring it to the people of southeast England. I had a feeling that Philippa would really get into it, and she did, she was screaming away.” 

Coles has family links to Dublin and Cork — he says Dublin is his second team, while he claims the Cork club St Finbarr’s as his number one. While he has never seen the Barrs in the flesh, that’s something he is planning to change as soon as he gets the chance.

“The Barrs sent me a membership card which was very nice of them but I’ve never actually been to a game. But now I've got a bit of time back, I shall rectify that. The Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork [Paul Colton] is a friend of mine, so I shall probably knock on his door and see if he’s got room in his palace for this humble travelling parson.”

 Coles puts his ever-increasing portfolio career and his busy ‘retirement’ down to his insatiable curiosity. “I am really nosy. So if I get my chance to stick my nose in somewhere, I really can't resist it,” he says. “Most of the stuff I do, I connect with an audience through a microphone or a lens. So with this show, to be in a venue and to have 500 people to talk to and for them to talk back is brilliant. 

"There's an endless limitless fascination with pop stars who became vicars because it’s an unusual turn on someone's CV. A lot of it is people who had their youth in the 1980s. We were the soundtrack to that youth in some way or another and that’s important and they want to connect with that. I think also, like everybody else, I’ve had my light and my shade, and I like to talk about that.” 

Richard Coles. Picture: Matt Crockett

A major part of that light and shade is the loss Coles suffered with the death of his husband David in 2019. It is a subject he has written about, in his book The Madness of Grief, with great insight, clarity and humour. It was David who inspired the name of his live show tour — Borderline National Trinket. “It was an expression of David's. I preened myself when someone said I was in danger of becoming a national treasure and he went ‘hmm, more like borderline national trinket’. So I’ve stuck with that.” 

 He finds many people want to share their experiences of grief with him. While being a vicar was also like being a part-time psychotherapist, how does he find it when people share their stories now?

“When you’re a vicar and other people’s burdens are placed on you, you have somewhere to send them to, you're the intermediary, the agent, you are the DHL of other people’s grief or joy. But I don't really have that now and often I will find myself in a conversation with somebody and I don’t have a formal role in that. But then I think my job is just to listen and walk alongside them, and say ‘I see you, I hear you’.

Coles is a multi-talented musician, playing saxophone, clarinet and piano, but recording music is not something that particularly interests him any more. Instead, he is reacquainting himself with the piano and listening to classical music. He says his nieces sometimes make fun of him for being out of touch with the music scene.

“But I did see Kylie — it was the gayest thing I've ever seen in all my life. And it was very good fun. But I have no idea what’s in the charts. I sort of miss the days when you went to the record shop, you bought the album from the band you loved and you took it home and it crackled when you took it out of the sleeve.”

Jimmy Somerville and Richard Coles of The Communards.

 He observes that making music and selling shedloads of records in the 1980s also offered greater financial rewards. “I do feel very much for musicians who are not Taylor Swift or Adele, who find millions of people listen to their music and download it and they don’t have enough to pay the gas bill.” 

Coles was lucky enough that his manager during his hedonistic days with The Communards was far-sighted enough to make financial provision for a comfortable retirement.

“Yes, she’s Irish — another of your countrywomen to whom I have reason to be very thankful. She had the foresight to see that while the good times were rolling, it would make sense to make provision for the future. So while some managers con you out of your money, she conned us into ours by making us sign these documents which gave us a pension scheme, and then all of a sudden, the unimaginable reality of being 60 arrived and you think ‘oh hello, that’s nice’.” 

Coles has also found stability in his personal life, and has been in a relationship for the past year, with the actor Richard Cant.

“I thought I was done when David died — I couldn’t imagine forming a relationship again. And then three years later, I woke up and all of a sudden, that seemed to be something I would like to do. So I got on a dating app, and in spite of having accidentally uploaded a picture of two Belted Galloways [a type of cow] in a field instead of myself, I met Richard and we've been stepping out for a year now, and it's lovely.” 

• This article was first published on January 8, 2024 and updated after Richard Coles joined the I'm A Celebrity line-up in November 2024.