Rev Richard Coles

Richard Coles read Theology at King’s College London, and after ordination worked as a curate in Lincolnshire, then in central London, before coming to Finedon in Northamptonshire, where he was a Vicar for eleven years. He was the multi-instrumentalist who partnered Jimmy Somerville in the 1980s band the Communards, which achieved three Top Ten hits, including the Number 1 record and best-selling single of 1986, a club/dance version of “Don’t Leave Me This Way”.

Reverend Richard Coles is co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live and is regularly seen as a guest panelist on shows such as Would I Lie To You?, Have I Got News For You and QI. Often described as Britain’s most famous vicar, Richard was the inspiration for the main character in the BBC hit comedy Rev, a programme for which he also served as consultant. In 2022, Reverend Richard Coles presented Good Grief? a Channel 4 documentary exploring the subject of how to live positively with grief. Currently, he frequents radio and TV, notably a recent contestant on The Great Celebrity Bake Off.

He is the author of Fathomless Riches, Bringing in the Sheaves, Lives and Legends of the Improbable Saints, and The Madness of Grief, which was a Sunday Times bestseller. His debut mystery novel Murder Before Evensong was published by Hachette in 2022, followed by A Death in the Parish in 2023, and Murder at the Monastery in 2024 – all three are No. 1 Sunday Times bestsellers. Two more Canon Clement books are in the works.

Since 2023, Richard has also been a co-host of the popular history podcast The Rabbit Hole Detectives.