Rev Richard Coles: 'The only vicar spray-tanned with Debbie McGee'

He is one of the most famous vicars in the UK but in just over a month's time the Reverend Richard Coles will retire from parish duties at his church in rural Northamptonshire, and instead volunteer with prisoners.

He will also leave the village which has been his home for more than 11 years and the county he and his family are from.

So how does the former pop star reflect on his time as vicar of Finedon?

Father Coles says: "Someone came to church the other day, this hulking young guy, and I said 'have you been here before?' and he said 'it's me Father Richard' and it was a kid from school, who I'd known since he was a little boy, and now he's a grown man and he's thinking about getting married.

"You are so much part of people's lives - you baptise them as kids, you marry them, usually in that order, and then you bury them or their parents or their grandparents and before you know it you're part of the community.

"So I leave, but I don't think I'll ever really leave, actually."

The vicar and his family hail from nearby Kettering and he now he feels more connected to his home town.

"The older I get the more I realise that you're the product of your past and I'm Kettering and I think when I was young what I wanted to be was 'not Kettering'.

"I wanted to go away and have adventures in the world and go to great cities and travel, and I love all that, but as I get older I know that I really am proper Kettering actually."

Father Coles says the death of his partner the Reverend David Coles has prompted his retirement and move away from Northamptonshire.

He died at Kettering General Hospital in December 2019 and last year Richard revealed it was alcohol that killed him.

Father Coles says: "When your life partner dies what dies with them is your future and I realised I wanted to be with people who I love and care about and know well and it just so happens that some of them live in Sussex and one of my oldest friends, a house two doors up from hers was up for sale, and she said 'why don't you move here' so I did.

"I think David on a good day would have wanted me to face forwards and step forwards; on a bad day he'd have loved me to stay at home stirring polenta and thinking of him again.

"But it's just part of the process of bereavement, you get used to a world in which the other person's not in it and then you start thinking, 'well, I'm in it', so what am I going to do?

"I think I've got some more to do."

In 2017, Father Coles appeared on BBC TV's Strictly Come Dancing, which he said his partner warned him against doing because "he said I dance like a walrus".

The 59-year-old says: "I must confess I nursed this completely ridiculous belief that I would be good at it - there was a Justin Timberlake or a Fred Astaire or a Gene Kelly waiting to be released.

"But he was right - it was a walrus, I couldn't do it."

He says the doctor during his pre-series medical told him: "You're overweight, you're one point off obese, you have arthritis in both knees and one leg is significantly longer than the other - you'll be fine."

The vicar says the series "was so much fun" and gave him a "great skill" to spot fake tan.

He says while others might think someone has been on holiday he knows if it is "Venetian double dark".

"I think I can safely say I'm the only vicar who's spray-tanned with Debbie McGee," he adds.

Father Coles' time as a vicar was preceded by a successful career as keyboard player with The Communards and he says he has performed his hits at the local cricket club in Finedon with the "parish band - The Cupping Melons".

He says: "I've had Don't Leave Me This Way as the exit music for a couple of funerals, actually, once at the funeral the person didn't know that it was a record that I'd made.

"One of my favourite things at a funeral was after Strictly I was at a Kettering crematorium funeral and just before it, a man, very solemn, came up to me and went 'vicar', I said 'yes' and he went 'you're a terrible dancer'."

Once Father Coles leaves Finedon he says he will volunteer with prisoners and people in the criminal justice system to try to cut reoffending.

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