Interview: Richard Coles

The retired vicar tells Tom Hodgkinson why he wants to get cancelled (a short extract from the Jan/Feb edition of the Idler, out now)

You may not need much of an introduction to Richard Coles, but let me remind you of the basic biographical facts about this outstanding and generally very busy polymath. As a twentysomething pianist, Richard joined the pop groups Bronski Beat and then The Communards and became famous. He and Jimmy Somerville had a huge hit with “Don’t Leave Me This Way”. In 1990 he had a religious experience and found himself called to the Church. He went on to study Theology at King’s College, London and was ordained in 2005. In 2011 he became vicar of Finedon in Northamptonshire.

As a media figure, he’s frequently hosted Radio 4’s Saturday Live and has also appeared on Strictly Come Dancing and Celebrity Masterchef. His long-term partner David, an alcoholic, died in 2019. Richard’s books include Lives of the Improbable Saints, his memoir Fathomless Riches and crime caper Murder Before Evensong. Richard is no longer vicar of Finedon, or indeed of anywhere, and has moved to a village near Eastbourne on the south coast of England. Is he finally going to slow down, we wondered?

Tom Hodgkinson: You’ve recently retired.

Richard Coles: Technically, yes. I have retired as Vicar of Finedon. But if retirement suggests days filled with languorous pleasures, then it hasn’t been like that at all. I’ve been awfully busy with other things. I’m trying to be less busy in 2023. But I think the only way I can do that is by getting myself cancelled. So I was thinking of ways I could do that and then maybe get a bit of time. I’ll be dumped by everybody and then I can just sit at home and play with the dogs, which I would quite like to do. But every time I’ve tried to make myself less popular – and there are plenty of reasons why people would not find me engaging – by saying some horrible truth about myself, it just makes people love me more.

TH: I’m sure you’ve reflected on your likeability.

RC: Not really. Partly because I think if you’re a vicar, you become inoculated against some of the more egregious effects of mistaking people’s reactions for popularity. But also, David, my late partner, couldn’t tolerate any of that nonsense and if I tried to get away with it, he would soon shoot me down in flames. He came up with a line once when I was preening myself. Somebody called me a national treasure and he grudgingly said he would borderline allow me to be a national trinket.

TH: I know from talking to other people in the public eye that the people who go a bit bonkers get public persona mixed up with the actual person. Are you quite clear that there are two distinctive entities?

RC: I have two operating modes. One is for my personal life and one is for my professional life. I had a big success when I was young through being a pop star, which sounds absurd now, but it was the case. I think I got to find a way of working out how to do it back then. It is very, very easy to be pompous and ridiculous. It’s a besetting sin of both parsons and pop stars. It’s something we have in common. In fact, parsons and pop stars are very close relatives. The audiences are smaller and the material rewards not as great in the latter role, but I think there’s something about communication and performance, it’s something about persuading people of the merits of the ecstatic world.

Our January/February issue is available in bookshops as well as Waitrose, WHSmiths, Sainsburys, Booth’s and Easons.