The Rev Richard Coles: I vowed to dance on Thatcher's grave – then I met her

Telegraph

05-04-2025

As a young and idealistic pop star, The Rev Richard Coles vowed that he would one day dance on Margaret Thatcher's grave.
Now he has recalled the moment that they came face-to-face in a Knightsbridge church decades later, and Coles realised that she was not the 'wicked' figure of his imagination.
He told the Oxford Literary Festival: 'In the 1980s, I was involved in adopting a Welsh mining village that was utterly destroyed by the end of industry there. And Margaret Thatcher's name was infamous. I can remember at the time vowing that I would one day dance on her grave – I'm not proud of it now, but it was in the heat of the moment.
'Years later, she became a parishioner of mine in Knightsbridge. I was the curate of the parish where she lived. I did the funeral of, I think, her sister-in-law. And suddenly there she was, of course very frail. It was not long before she died and her grip on reality was uncertain. She had her people with her.
'It was so interesting to see someone who in my mind was a character of unimaginable darkness, wickedness, but was just, of course, a frail old woman.
'And then, after she died, she was buried at the Royal Hospital Chelsea. I was at a do there and I was standing next to her grave [Baroness Thatcher's ashes were interred beside those of her husband, Denis, in the hospital grounds]. Of course, I wouldn't and didn't.' Coles, a former contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, joked that he considered doing 'maybe just half a cha-cha'.
Coles was involved in a gay and lesbian support group for miners at the time of the Miners' Strike.
After leaving the music business he joined the Church, latterly as a vicar in Finedon, Northants, before retiring from clerical duties in 2022.
He is the author of a cosy crime series about a vicar in a village with an unusually high crime rate.
The books are being adapted for television with Matthew Lewis, the actor best known for playing Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films, as the leading man. The series will launch on Channel 5 in the autumn.
Last year, Coles entered the jungle as a contestant on ITV's I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!
'I hadn't planned on that happening,' he said. 'The woman who produced it, I have worked with her on something else and I like her very much. They ask me every year and I always say no. Last year she asked me and my agent said, 'Maybe you should let her down gently. Ask for a ridiculous fee and she will have to say no.' And then she said yes.'
Coles has remained friendly with his fellow camp mates. He said: 'There is a very busy WhatsApp group. We've got a reunion coming up and we're all desperately trying to be invited to Coleen Rooney's.'