‘He’s left a massive hole in my life’: Richard Coles opens up about grieving his partner on I’m a Celebrity

I’m a Celebrity contestant Reverend Richard Coles has opened up about the grief he still feels for the loss of his late partner, Reverend David Coles.

While sharing an emotional moment with former Strictly dancer Oti Mabuse on Tuesday night’s episode (26 November) of the ITV show, Coles, 62, said: “I miss him… He’s just left a massive hole in my life and I’m living my life around that loss.”

Coles, a former Church of England priest, lost his civil partner David just days before Christmas in 2019. He died at the age of 43 from liver disease caused by an alcohol addiction.

In his 2021 book, The Madness of Grief: A Memoir of Love and Loss, Coles wrote: “It was really, really tough to see somebody you love destroy himself.

“It is like someone is drowning and you throw them a lifebelt but they are just not taking the lifebelt.

“And I did try everything I could think of to help him stop drinking, and in fairness to him he did try too, but it was too much for him.”

The retired clergyman also shared his experience of juggling his sexuality and his religion on Monday’s episode of I’m a Celebrity.

Content creator GK Barry, who earlier in the series opened up about her own sexuality and coming out, asked Coles: “Did you find it quite difficult being gay and doing that job?”

Coles confessed: “No, not at all. I’ve never given it a moment’s twinge of anxiety over whether God thought it was alright or not. Whether other people thought it was alright or not, well I’m happy to have that argument…”

He added of his sexuality: “Also, I was not the first. Sometimes I look at documents from the early Church, or the Church of the Middle Ages and I just think – so gay.”

Coles and Barry have formed an unlikely friendship in the camp, with Barry admitting in the Bush Telegraph: “I came into this jungle, maybe not knowing who I would gel with or who I would be close with in here and never in a million years if you told me that I would be getting on best with a reverend would I have believed you. But he is honestly... I think he might be my favourite person in here.”

Before David’s death, Coles had maintained that the pair cohabitated but were celibate, based on Church of England rules prohibiting clergy from same-sex sexual relationships.

But in an interview with The Times earlier this year, Coles indicated that this was untrue, and that he and David had lied to keep their positions in the Church.

When journalist Andrew Billen noted that it would have annoyed and upset him to lie about his life in this way, Richard replied: “It wears off pretty quickly... I mean, I felt sometimes like I was in the Resistance and they were the Gestapo.

“I mean, I’m overstating it, but what I did feel is that they had no moral cause, so I didn’t feel that I had a moral obligation at all.

“And I’m not the first person to find themselves obliged to lie for institutional reasons in the Church of England.”

Coles also previously stated that he and David, whom he entered a civil partnership with in 2010, had planned to marry after they both retired. Same-sex marriage is not permitted in the Church of England, and could have resulted in both men losing their jobs.

He retired as vicar of Finedon, North Northamptonshire, in 2022 due to his belief that the organisation was excluding gay couples, and his disapproval of what he described as its “conservative, punchy and fundamentalist” direction.

He has been in a relationship with the actor Richard Cant since 2023.

Coles first rose to fame as part of the 1980s band the Communards, who achieved three UK top 10 hits, including “Don’t Leave Me This Way”.

Since then, he has appeared on various radio and TV shows including BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live programme, QI, Would I Lie to You? and Have I Got News for You.