Latest news with #TheCommunards
Telegraph
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The Rev Richard Coles: ‘I found a bromance in the jungle with a 25-year-old lesbian'
5am I'm an early riser. I like to think it inclines to virtue so I can do something useful like washing up or writing books. 6am I start with morning prayer. It's an obligation for everyone who is ordained in the Church of England. Even though I'm retired as a vicar, I help out at a church near me, St Mary's in Eastbourne, East Sussex. 7am I might boil myself an egg and have some soldiers. I'm on Ozempic at the moment – I just want to be less fat. The appetite in my head remains but the appetite in my body has greatly diminished. I was in New York the other week and normally I would be gorging on strip steaks and burgers but I ate like a bird, much to the amusement of my friends. I don't know how much I've lost. I've decided not to look. 9am I might go out for a walk. I used to have two sausage dogs: Daisy, 15, and Pongo, 14. I lost them last year and miss them. I spend a lot of my time at home playing the piano. It's my great indulgence. I've got a piano teacher now and I'm trying to rebuild my technique. I don't miss pop music [Coles was in the synth-pop duo The Communards]. I'm really happy with what I'm playing, which is mostly classical. Or I read – often non-fiction. I love Careless People, from the whistleblower at Facebook [Sarah Wynn-Williams]. She reveals what we all suspected – a company that begins full of social justice ends up being a ruthless monopoly. She's a brave person. My new book, A Death on Location [out now], has become a bit like visiting friends tinged through the darkness of murder. It's especially interesting now because the first one, Murder Before Evensong, is being filmed for television. I'm visiting the set a fair bit and talking to the characters I've invented, who are now flesh and blood. Matthew Lewis [Neville Longbottom in Harry Potter ] is playing Canon Clement and Amanda Redman is Audrey. 1pm I'll have a salad and hummus, which my partner, actor Dickie [Richard Cant, 60, the son of the late children's television presenter Brian], has introduced me to. 3pm I might go out on my bike. I've got an e-bike to spare my knees and I go around looking more and more like that woman in The Wizard of Oz [Miss Gulch]. I loved being in the jungle [Coles came third in I'm a Celebrity last year]. I really did enjoy sleeping outside, and I found prayer helpful there. Prayer came under medical necessity, so I used to get access to the medical room. I had thought I might get a bromance out of the jungle. I did get one – only with a 25-year-old lesbian influencer [GK Barry]. GK and I have a continuing friendship and we are trying to arrange a reunion with everyone. We are trying to get Coleen [Rooney] to agree to have it at hers as we all want to see her media room. 6pm You can drink with Ozempic – but your thirst is also a bit diminished. On Ozempic I just want to cook smaller portions. I did a cookery course at Ballymaloe last year and I love Sabrina Ghayour's Persian cookery. We have a division of labour – Dickie does gardening and decor; I do laundry and cooking. 8pm We might go to recitals at the Wigmore Hall, or quite often I slob on the sofa and watch YouTube. I think social media has scrambled my ability to engage with entertainment. Occasionally we will watch something really good, like The White Lotus. 10pm I'm a fairly poor sleeper. I take a while to drop off, especially if I doom scroll.
Evening Standard
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Rev Richard Coles says weight loss jabs helped him resist ‘midnight kebabs' and tackle pre-diabetes
The 63-year-old is best known as one half of the 1980s pop duo The Communards, alongside Jimmy Somerville. Since stepping away from music, he has carved out a successful second act as a broadcaster, writer and Church of England priest, with regular appearances across TV and radio. His credits include Strictly Come Dancing, QI and Have I Got News for You.
Daily Mail
31-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Being a bestselling author is like being a pop star again, says REVEREND RICHARD COLES
The Reverend Richard Coles is an author, radio presenter and Church of England vicar, writes York Membery. The 63-year-old shot to fame in 1986 as half of the pop duo The Communards, who topped the charts with Don't Leave Me This Way – the UK's biggest single of that year. Ordained in 2005, he won BBC Celebrity Mastermind in 2014 and co-presented the BBC Radio 4 show, Saturday Live, for 12 years, stepping down in 2023. In 2022 he published the first of several crime novels, the bestselling Murder Before Evensong, which has been adapted for television and airs this autumn. He lives with his partner, actor Richard Cant, in East Sussex. What did your parents teach you about money? My father Nigel inherited a prosperous family shoe-making business, which had lasted four generations in Northamptonshire, but it vanished on his watch in the 1970s due to cheap imports – so we went from being reasonably well-off to being a bit harder up. My dad would have actually been happier as an academic, despite coming from a long line of hard-nosed businessmen, but a bit of that hard-nosedness has rubbed off on me. My mother Liz was thrifty, in the way that war children were. But my parents splurged on good food and good holidays. My outlook towards money has changed over the years. I was a rampant socialist in my youth but am more of a 'centrist dad' now, as well as being a devout Christian. Have you struggled to make ends meet? Yes, when I first came to London in 1980, aged 18, I spent four or five years on the dole or scratching a living as a busker. So I know what it's like to be completely skint and to even have to go without food at times. That said, I could always 'phone a friend', as it were, so I was never destitute. I've always had a fear of falling into debt, but I've not ended up in the workhouse yet. Have you ever been paid silly money? I went from being on the dole to being a pop star – it was like a lottery win – but overnight success didn't really serve me well. It was all so sudden and unexpected, and I was in my 20s, that I p****d most of it up against the wall – and a lot of it went up my nose or other people's noses. What was the best year of your financial life? The year 1988 was pretty good because by then the royalties were rolling in from The Communards. We sold well around the world [their Never Can Say Goodbye single sold two million copies], though touring was loss-making in those days. I'm probably better off now than ever before. Being a bestselling author is the nearest thing to being a pop star again, and has been very financially rewarding. But this time I'm investing in Isas rather than putting it up my nose. The most expensive thing you bought for fun? A Bosendorfer piano. They are one of the big five piano-makers, and they are very good for those specialising in a German / Austrian classical music repertoire, though a lot of jazz pianists use them too. It's equivalent in value to the car you buy when you have a mid-life crisis. I play it every day. What is your biggest money mistake? I'm the only person who didn't make money on the London property market in the 1980s. I bought an end of terrace Georgian house in Islington for £160,000 at the peak of the property market and sold it at the absolute trough in the early 1990s, just about breaking even. If I'd hung on to it, I'd be sitting very pretty. Best money decision you have made? Taking out a pension when I was in The Communards, though it was really my manager's decision, Lorna Gradden, rather than mine. Some bands might get ripped off by their manager but I was greatly enriched by mine, who set up an extremely favourable pension scheme for me when I was 23, securing guaranteed annuities too, which has made life much easier for me since reaching 60 three years ago. Whenever I meet young people who are starting out in showbusiness I always tell them to start paying into a pension at the earliest opportunity. When you're 25, the idea of being 60 is unimaginable, but it comes, and when it does come you'll be grateful for that pension. I'm not sure I'll ever fully retire, but I'd like to take things a bit quieter when I reach 65. Will you pass down your money or spend it all? I'd like to make sure my partner Richard is financially secure if I pre-decease him, and I'll pass on money to my five nephews and nieces. Of course, they've now got an incentive to murder! I'll also leave money to the charity Parkinson's UK – my father died from the disease – several church charities, and a charity supporting the sub-postmasters until they get the compensation they are owed. Do you own any property? Yes, an 18th century cottage with a couple of bedrooms in a small village in East Sussex, where I have a lot of friends, close to the sea. I'll stay here for as long as I can manage the stairs. The only downside when you buy an old property made of local materials is that you find that you've become a historic buildings curator and you need to get specialist people to fix things. If you were Chancellor what would you do? Invest in infrastructure and get the roads and railways working, to try to arrest that daily crumbling decline that you see wherever you go, because it just stifles growth and prosperity. I know everyone slags off the Chancellor, but I'm glad to see the Government is going to moderate changes to winter fuel payments. What is your number one financial priority? To ensure I've got enough to pay for my care needs, and those of my dependents. A Death On Location, by Rev Richard Coles, is published in hardback on Thursday, priced £22. He is currently touring theatres around the UK with his one-man show (
The Sun
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
I'm A Celeb star reveals why he turned down Celebrity Big Brother before signing up to jungle
REVEREND Richard Coles declined an offer to appear on Celebrity Big Brother before signing up for I'm A Celebrity. The 63-year-old came third, behind Danny Jones and Coleen Rooney, on last year's I'm A Celebrity, but has now revealed he could very easily have taken a starring role in another ITV reality show. 3 The pop star-turned-priest, who formed one half of Eighties pop duo The Communards, with singer Jimmy Somerville, and previously appeared on 2017's Strictly Come Dancing, even admits to being a big Big Brother fan. But Rev Coles fears he wouldn't have been able "relax" as a contestant on CBB, and he wouldn't have wanted to have to nominate fellow housemates for eviction. Speaking exclusively to The Sun, he says: 'They asked me to do Big Brother last year for the first one, and I'm such a big fan of the show. I just don't think that I'd be able to relax and enjoy it. "Because I'd be too busy thinking about things, whereas, at least in the jungle, I've got no idea how to survive in a jungle. 'I mean, they asked. You know the way they float the idea past. Would you be up for? And I met with them, and we had a discussion about it, but it just didn't happen." Rev Coles, who retired from clerical duties in 2022 and previously co-hosted BBC Radio 4 show Saturday Live, now hosts The Apple and The Tree podcast, and is glad he ended up opting against a stint in the CBB house. He adds of a potential appearance on CBB: "I was quite glad that it didn't, because I just don't know if I'd be able to live in a house with loads of celebs on a show like Big Brother. "You've got to say like who you like the most and who you don't like the most. We didn't have to do any of that on the jungle. "I just had to do loads of trials and get locked in boxes and covered in fish cuts, which I actually would rather, than being in the Big Brother house." Rev Coles was one of two I'm A Celebrity late arrivals, with him and Love Island star Maura Higgins joining the group after the other campmates. Reverend Richard Coles left gagging as he struggles to swallow a fish eye alongside Tulisa Contostavlos in I'm A Celeb trial Despite saying he was terrified of heights and would be relying on his faith to complete trials, Rev Coles ended up proving a popular contestant, with both viewers and fellow campmates. He ended up coming third after viewers voted McFly singer Danny Jones as their King of The Jungle, with former England footballer Wayne Rooney 's wife Coleen coming second. When Radio 1 star Dean McCollough became the second celeb to be evicted from the jungle, after The Sun's Jane Moore, Richard referenced Dean's lack of work ethic by saying: "Who's going to not fetch our water now?!'
