The Reverend Richard Coles

0:04Hello, Gabby here. Welcome back to The Midpoint. The life of my guest today has had many different chapters, from the heady days of 80s pop in groups like the Communards and Bronski Beat to the clergy and serving as a vicar for over a decade. Together with his bandmate Jimmy Somerville, the Reverend Richard Coles had three UK Top 10s and the UK's biggest selling single of 1986 with Don't Leave Me This Way. I'm not going to sing it for you, but I'm sure you know the one. But his pop career burned bright and burned fast. and by the early 90s, Richard's life was going in a very different direction, studying theology at King's College London.

0:41A long stint of presenting shows on BBC Radio 3 and 4 followed and in 2005, he was ordained and eventually returned to his home county of Northamptonshire to serve as a vicar. Richard has since retired from clerical duties and established himself as an author and TV personality. You might remember him being forced to eat horrible things on I'm a Celebrity last year. He did it brilliantly. But amongst this interesting and varied journey to the midpoint, there have, of course, been dark times too, including losing his husband David in 2019. I'm interested to find out more about all of these aspects of Richard's life.

1:18So let's meet him.

1:25Hello, Richard. Welcome to the midpoint. Hello, Gabby. Nice to see you. And you too. I think we should come clean. We speak on a Friday afternoon. I know exactly where you are, actually, but I don't know what you can see from the window. The sun's shining. There's a feeling of spring in the air and hope and possibility. Are you feeling that way right now? I am feeling that way. I've got a little reminder of winter because I picked up a cold last week, which has lingered on my chest in a way, which makes me want to rub it with, I don't know, embrocation or something. But no, from what I'm seeing and facing forward, The trees are in bud, the birds are singing, the sun's shining, life is sweet.

2:05Do you have a glass heart, you seem like you have a glass heart full, an optimistic and positive approach to life generally? Oh God no, I'm a huge pessimist, entirely wrong. I always think that the thunderclouds are waiting just beyond the horizon and roll in. Usually when I go out on my bike and I'll be at the furthest possible distance from home, when there'll be a cloud burst and lightning bolts landing all around me. So I'm a hopeful person, but I'm not an optimistic person, I'm afraid. Really? And is that where in life has that attitude come from? Where has that pessimism come from? I grew up in Kettering.

2:39And anyone who's grew up in Kettering will know what it's like to fear the imminent rise. Well, this is in Kettering. Obviously, no offence meant, but there was something in your upbringing, was there, in your childhood? I don't know. I think I just, it's a temperament thing. My father was the same. I think my father had a slightly Eeyore-ish quality, which I've got. And I have to say, it's not borne out by the evidence. I find life delivers just as much to delight in as to wish to avoid. But it's a temperament, really. And my temperament is towards pessimism, I think. Also, you know, if ever you did feel you wanted to encourage pessimism within you, just turn on your social media.

3:18Oh, turn it off. No, we don't need to do that. All the news. But is that why maybe you are a master of reinvention or at least you've had so many successful career changes? Because you're always feeling, well, this might all disappear. So I should say yes to this opportunity. And this this thing looks exciting. Well, I think that's the freelancer's fate, isn't it? It's always the next job is the last job. So you might as well. So, yes. I mean, it's nice of you to say that. But of course, I think what people see in my successes, I've more successfully buried my failures. So it hasn't been a life.

3:48There you go. There you go. Being the pessimist again. You see, I would say, no, you seem to turn your hand to. You do very well. And I actually read a quote of your saying that people often ask you, how do you do it all? And you say, actually, now makes sense. Your answer to that, do you remember what it was? I think it was by disappointing people and not being very good. Yeah, and that's just why. That's such a negative way of answering what is a really positive question, isn't it? I'm sure you don't disappoint people. Oh, I do frequently. We never deliver. It came from being a vicar, actually, Gabby, because the demands of the job are limitless and the resources you have to meet them are limited.

4:22So there's always going to be a short... Like being a teacher. Yeah, exactly. Or a parent, actually. I mean, I've seen lots of parents in this podcast just lately, The Apple and the Tree, and one of the abiding themes that come across is parents feeling that they've somehow disappointed their children and children feeling they've somehow disappointed their parents. Fact is, we're none of us perfect, right? So perhaps the secret of happiness is learning to live with our limitations. What's brought about the apple? and the tree your new podcast what was the what was the premise the idea behind well my uh unlimited nosiness is one of them i think but also i think as a vicar i spend a lot of time hosting conversations between people which are necessary but perhaps not always easy so that's something i think i've got the skill set for that but also both my parents my mum died last year my father died a few years ago and i spend a surprising amount of time thinking about the conversations I wish I'd had with them.

5:15Well, we give people the opportunity in, I hope, a safe and respectful way to have those conversations. And I was listening to Vanessa Feltz and her daughter, and you don't interject a lot. You let the conversation evolve between the two subjects. They tend to kind of throw back and forth ideas about each other. I mean, they are two exceptional talkers, I should say. Yes, the idea of Vanessa Feltz and reticence don't really fit together very well. But of course, Vanessa, that you can avoid subjects by talking, not just by not saying things, but by saying things. And I think Vanessa, who's a very skilled talker, sometimes can divert herself away from topics which are perhaps uncomfortable.

5:59I don't want to say that sounds as if they're somehow threatening. I don't think they're threatening. I think, in fact, they're the opposite of threatening. I think they give us things rather than take things away. But you need to have the invitation to do it. And then once they're up and running, don't interrupt because I have no need. Are you a good listener then? I've become a better listener. I mean, I used to be a good talker and a poor listener. But actually, I don't think you can be a good talker if you are a poor listener. Vickering made me shut up. And that would become a surprise to people who know me as a motormouth.

6:29But actually, a lot of the conversations I had as a vicar were not saying things. So in other words, to create space for people to say the things they need to say. And yet when you think of a good vicar, you think of brilliant sermons inspiring people and you think about it as all being communication one way, don't you? But a lot of your job would have been hearing people and seeing when they needed to be heard. Yeah, and I started my career in Lincolnshire, in the Fens, and famously a place of Tatterton people, and people who aren't particularly used to speaking about the stuff that is important to them, and don't expect to be listened to if they do.

7:09And I learned there to just shut up and let people talk, especially as a vicar, often with people at those events in their life which define their lives, their best days, their worst days. And it's fascinating to hear people talking who don't normally talk and who don't expect to be heard. Anybody who'd grown up, me, listening to Bronski Beat in the Communards might have been quite surprised when you turned up as a vicar. but obviously your first kind of love or it looked like academically was theology and and that wasn't necessarily a surprise to you that you ended up in that direction was it just a kind of a period of time that you know when you when you look back there was always going to be something else I don't know I was a chorister so I started off in that world if you see what I mean so it looked like a dramatic departure but in a way it was a return to where I'd been before So I grew up in church circles.

8:01I love church music. I like church people. I always thought it was mythology. I thought it was nonsense and that nobody in their right mind would believe that stuff. And then I got to the end of my 20s, and after a period of turbulence and lots of excitement and adventure and misadventure, I just started wanting to connect with what I think I'd intimated when I was at a point that there was something distinctive, unique about what happened in religious space that didn't happen anywhere else and I wanted to be part of it again. When you're in the crazy world of pop is there much time to think about God?

8:35No not really most of my time was thinking about Jimmy Somerville and how to mitigate the more extraordinary aspects of his behaviour there's a lot of that going on and also what it was like to work with an amazingly talented musician he's really extraordinary elemental person so that was there's a lot of kind of management of ego and people and music making there wasn't much time to reflect it's why albums second albums are so often a bit dull is because your first album is written out of the raw experience of your life which you've been creating and then your second album you've done is sit in an airplane and go to a studio there's not much to say about that really yeah that was came across in it through i don't know if you saw the Lewis Capaldi documentary.

9:20No, I haven't, but I want to. I found it's a brilliant watch. And he's obviously disappeared at the moment, hasn't he? He's not making music at the moment. And that really came through amongst a lot of other reasons why it wasn't. But not having that second album come out, how he felt it should, you felt contributed to his mental health. Tell us a bit then about your relationship with Jimmy Somerville. Were you brotherly? Was there an avuncular nature to it? You've pointed to maybe a parental kind of role that you played there. We were comrades, I think, before anything else. We were both gay runaways to London in an era where you had to run away to London, really, to live a liveable life.

9:56And so that was the one thing we had. But your family knew. Your family knew your sexuality, didn't they, when you went? Yeah, I came out when I was 16, to the surprise of no one, rather annoyingly. Ta-da! Guess what? Yeah, we kind of figured that out. And then I met Jimmy, and Jimmy and I had this one thing in common, but it was a huge thing in common. And so we were part of a gang that was trying to find that livable life, I suppose. And I think after six months, I began to understand the words he said. He was a thick lesbian accent. And then he opened his mouth to sing and the most extraordinary sound came out.

10:32And I think because I'd been a chorister, the idea of a high male voice that was simultaneously kind of pure and yet also powerful, it really resonated with me. And we set to music our concerns, you know, which was that livable life and trying to do, to find a place where we would enjoy some respect, some dignity, some chance of happiness, you know. Yeah. Give a little respect to me. Exactly. Do you know, when I hear that, I immediately, bizarrely, because there is some synergy in chatting to you or some other coincidence. I went to Catholic school and we used to be sent in year, would have been 12, 13, to a retreat for a week in a kind of weird place in North Yorkshire that had bunk beds.

11:16And the girls were all in one big room and the boys were in another. And all we did was play Bronski beat and communards and whichever one was around at the time. Maybe it was a communards. And that's such a kind of weird thought that I'm sitting there kind of listening to your music in that religious environment. environment actually encouraging thought i like the idea of these dormitories filled with the sound of disco when we should have been focusing on the lord and praying and doing other things but you two had had this incredible relationship making brilliant music and then you move in another direction you go off in another direction is it is it like is there some grief involved and is it like a grieving process when you oh yeah like that well i knew a life would be short short but vivid and I kind of realised that it wasn't something I wanted to persevere with and I don't think I could have really so there was a consciousness so we didn't break up we decided to have a break and 40 years later we're still on it so you must have been asked to go on those revival tours and constantly but I'd rather leave it in the past and there's some things I think are best left where they where they blossomed if I can put it that way I think the law of diminishing returns applies and I haven't yet been caught by HMRC so I don't have to most bands reunite because for tax reasons or divorces yeah do you have a whatsapp group or any kind of regular communication with Jimmy yeah no we we we we exchange condolences we're at a time of life now where the people around us are beginning to die so the last time I was in Mumbai airport and I heard that Annie, Jimmy's mum, had died, who was a remarkable person.

12:56So I emailed Jimmy condolences and I think emailed condolences when I think my father died. And, you know, and then both other members of Bronski had both died too, so we exchanged condolences then. That sounds a bit mournful, doesn't it? It does, but I guess you're 63, so you are at the, I suppose, the upper end of the midpoint of midlife. Do you consider yourself middle-aged? Well, that's a really interesting question because, yes, but I kind of think I'm 28 really and then I look in the mirror and I see my grandfather looking back at me so it's a common concern and condition in midlife I think this I bet it is yeah so I think my favorite age to be was 38 I loved being 38 and I would very happily be 38 for a good long stretch and I'm not that now but I'm enjoying my 60s Gabby I'm really enjoying my 60s.

13:46And you are in love? Yes, I am. Yeah? Which is very good. Yeah, and being in a lovely relationship helps, doesn't it? Health-wise, do you feel great? No, I'm knackered, my knees are knackered, I'm fat, I'm on a Zen pick, so I'm taking remedial efforts to mitigate... How's that going? Well, I've only just started, it was my birthday the day before yesterday and I bought myself a Zen pick as a birthday present, I just had my first jab, so it's too early to say. Nobody's actually said they're on a Zempic on this podcast yet. You're a first for me. Well, I don't know if I'll be right. I'll see how I get on.

14:20I mean, if it makes me feel liverish, I probably won't do it. But I do need to lose a bit of weight. And I don't know, lifestyle, hotel breakfast, you know. You succumb to the big fry up, do you, for breakfast? Well, I've spoken a bit lately. I'm going for more sort of egg options, but, you know, with hollandaise sauce and bacon. It's hard when somebody else is making it and doing all that effort, isn't it? Also, I think being away from having a hotel, no matter how nice the hotel is, makes you feel a little bit insecure. And I think for comfort, I sometimes wolf down black pudding. So why are you on the road so much at the moment?

14:58Well, that's interesting. As a person in late middle age who planned to sort of retire, I just seem to be quite busy. And I think that's partly the fear of your next job is your last job. But also I've had a sort of flourishing in my 60s with writing in particular. And I think the idea was I could write books and stay at home. But of course you can't write books and stay at home. You have to write books and then go and talk about books. Go sell them, yeah. Make films of books and all that kind of thing. And also if I didn't like it, I wouldn't do it. Am I right in thinking you moved to East Sussex?

15:30Yeah, I've done it. Well, I'm in the South Downs now, about half a mile from the sea, in a very beautiful, it's a ridiculous village. It's a very pretty, pretty village. I think I'm the only person who lives there who doesn't have a BAFTA.

15:45Surely it's on the cards. I do think so. I don't get prizes, Gabby. I get sort of... Do you get a lot of nominations? No, I get certificates, like for my cycling proficiency or St John Ambulance, something like that, but I don't get prizes. I always say I never win. I get nominated for lots of things, but I never win. And it's just awful sitting there, clapping away for somebody else constantly. I just did an interview on the computer with somebody. And in the background... By the way, it's not really Daily Mail. It's absolutely fine, just so that they don't have a headline, Gabby Logan hates losing.

16:20So there you go, yeah. The person I was talking to had just casually an Emmy on the shelf behind her. Brilliant. It was very good. That was, oh God, what could I... I have got some RTSs, you know, National Television Awards. I haven't got that at all, actually. I got an award from the Archbishop of Canterbury for preaching. Well that's, I mean none of us no matter how much good telly we do can never get that Well that's quite good, that's a nice chunky silver medal and I got, what else did I get Oh I won MasterChef That's pretty impressive Yeah, that trophy is in the most obvious place I could find in my kitchen without making it I won a Bake Off which surprised everybody in my family There you go, that came last I also once had to pick up an award well one award I had to pick up was for David Beckham and one for Arsene Wenger and both of those awards stayed on my shelf.

17:07One was for GQ and one for L. They were very glamorous awards and they stayed on my shelves for years. Eventually I returned to Arsene Wenger about 10 years later and he was most confused because I turned up to interview him about an FA Cup final. I said, oh, by the way, I've been meaning to give you this for a decade. And he looked totally bemused. I imagine Arsene has shelves. Well, Arsene might not have shelves and shelves. But he will. Are you a sports fan? I am, yeah. Well, I'm an Arsene fan. I know you're a Gaelic sports fan. Can we talk about this? Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm a huge fan of the Gaelic.

17:39I'm a bars fan. St. Finn Bars Cork is my club. Yeah, I love Gaelic football. Is it true that this came about because of normal people? Absolutely true. I was watching normal people, and somehow I found Paul Mescal, an arresting figure to watch. I mean, come on. Extraordinary. And he was playing this game of football, and all of a sudden the football went weird. And I thought, what on earth are you doing? You should pick that ball up. I'm sure that's against the rules. and then I realised it was GAA. And so I started watching it and then I found my way to it on YouTube. And then I've discovered family connection to bars.

18:16And I'm a member of the bars now. I know, I heard this. Yeah. So are you a regular, do you go down there to watch? No, I've never been. It's in Cork. This happened in lockdown, of course. So that never happened. And actually I was in Cork a while ago, but it didn't coincide with the game. but I'm going over to Cork later in the year so I'm sure the Bishop of Cork is a friend of mine who's cathedral is St Finn Bar's Cathedral so I think we'll have a little trip to see if I can get in on his It's beautiful the Irishness in my family is from Cork and you're not far away from places like Kinsale and the Ring of Kerry and all those beautiful places down there so you and your husband need to go you're not married No we're not we're only we're courting It's a bit early, a bit early for that, your boyfriend.

19:03It's not that, it's just we're... What do you call him? What is it, your other half? I was supposed to say partner, but that sounds like your accountants, doesn't it? We've got the same name as well, which has produced a whole new complication for everybody. I call him Dickie, but all his friends call him Richard, and my friends will call me Richard, apart from one who calls me Dickie. But we were all away on holiday recently, and we never knew who was trying to talk to him. Oh, a lovely trip down there, though. I think that could be on the cards. So you're also amongst these many things and these many hats you wear.

19:34You are the Chancellor of Northampton University. Yes. And you explained you were born in Kettering. So that's the part of the world that you come from, even if you don't reside there now. What does that mean to you? I was the Chancellor of Leeds Trinity University, actually. And it's a really lovely thing to hand out degrees and talk to young people at the start of their professional life. How much do you get involved with all of that? Well, as much as I can, which basically means, I mean, it's a ceremonial job, as you know. So my job is really to go out and hand out. Wear nice robes. Yeah, and talk to people.

20:04But also Northampton University, we built a new campus a few years ago, which was a big thing. We regenerated a brownfield site in a struggling town centre. So it's brought not just the university, it's brought an awful lot of impact to the place where I was. I was actually born in Northampton, grew up near Kettering and was Vicar of Fyndon in Northamptonshire. And I love it in a way I once described it as England's Kansas Northampton. It's the sort of place you go through on your way to somewhere you might think more interesting. But actually, it's full of interest if you stop and take the time and travel.

20:38It's a tough, I didn't know it very, I actually used to train there as a gymnast because one of the British squad coaches was based at six, I want to say six ways, six. Oh, it begins with a six, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, six. Yes, it's a sports centre there. And then my son has played for Northampton Saints for the last couple of years. So he moved to Northampton. So I had to discover a bit more about Northampton. I know exactly where the university campus is. And it is an interesting little town, isn't it? Sixfields. Sixfields, that's it. No, we needed to get it right. Because it has those lovely old Regency buildings that are near the racecourse and they look like they're full of promise.

21:15And then the town centre, sadly, is like a lot of town centres in this country. it's kind of been lovely shops have been replaced by vape shops and things like that and it just feels like we've we've let this happen kind of under our noses and i don't know whose fault it is town planners but you look around there and you think how in its heyday when it was the center of shoemaking in the world would have been such an amazing town center well i remember it of course i remember it when the whole town was you know there's lots of victorian terrace streets with a little shoe factory at the end of every street and you'd hear the sound of the of the machines that sewed the shoes, you know, the uppers together.

21:50And the smell of it, well, you can still smell that heat to be in Northampton today, but in a different way. But it was a shoe town. Everybody was involved in that enterprise. And it created wealth. And that was my family's store. My family was shoe manufacturers. And so it goes deep with me, I think. And I love... It's also, the villages are very beautiful. There are some big aristocratic... I always wondered why there were so many aristocrats living in Northampton. But I found out it was because it's good hunting country. in the days when people liked hunting. Some people still do. Northampton, she was considered to be among the best.

22:23Well, the Old Thorpe Estate, obviously, is the one that people might know, which is where Princess Diana grew up, is probably one of the most famous, isn't it? Well, there's loads. I mean, there's Altrecht, and the Spencers' really famous one. You've got the Becluses at Boughton. You've got the Brunels at Dean. You've got the Marquess of Northampton at Castle Ashby. And I think it's all, perhaps they just like hanging out with each other. I don't know. I think it was really the hunting.

22:49I hope you're enjoying this episode of The Midpoint. If you are, it would be amazing if you could give us a review and subscribe. It really helps. I'll be back in a moment.

23:02We started off kind of establishing that you might be a bit of a pessimist. And you lived through a time when you talked about running away to be a gay man in London. You lived through a time where the AIDS and HIV epidemic that kind of blew up and everybody thought that anybody who was gay was going to catch this and was going to die potentially. And I'm sure you lived through a lot of fear in that period of time that was heightened by the hysteria of the way it was all reported. So you've lived through a really scary period of history and I feel like bringing it to where we are right now, a lot of people feel like we're living in the scariest of times.

23:40What have you learnt about looking forwards and trying to find positivity from that experience you had in the 80s? Well, I think the AIDS epidemic was such a traumatic experience for us. It's finally now, only really now, 30, 40 years later, that my surviving friends and I really talk about it. And when we do, it reminds me a bit of talking to people who've seen combat, who talk about, again, it seems to be a sort of three-decade period of cooking before that becomes something you can talk about. I think when trauma affects you, you just do what you do to get through it. But of course, you also know that you can get through it.

24:17And maybe something to sustain hope in that. And also, I think it made us very close. And I noticed that of my closest circle of friends, a number of us are veterans of that period. And we share something unique because of it, I think. As a vicar, I spent a lot of time around bereavement and mortality. And I sort of know what it looks like from the outside. But it normally only comes to you in that sort of way, where it threatens you at the end of your life, where perhaps you have a lifetime's worth of experience to serve you as you try to deal with it. What the age thing happened was we were in our 20s and we were young and didn't really understand or were ill-prepared for it.

24:58So it threw us all, I think. I think it's one of the reasons why ecstasy took off in nightclubs was on the gay scene. Life was so dark for a while. I think if you could have a night of happiness, pharmacologically induced you took it escape from the reality that was your daily life and fear and you've talked a bit about death already you know through this podcast of losing people and getting getting closer i guess to that kind of inevitableness of of your facing your own mortality as a looking he's looking he's again where's this going you yeah yeah you obviously have a lot more experience of death as a vicar and dealing with families who have been bereaved and talking to people who know that the end of their life is coming, does that make you any more prepared or any more kind of strengthened and fortified in the face of your own mortality?

25:55No, it doesn't, because your own mortality is, of course, a bespoke and unique experience for you. And of course, my husband David died in 2019. And I thought I would kind of know what that would be like but of course you're the subject rather than on the outside of it looking on and it's something that goes off like a bomb in your life and you just have to let it happen and I think like lots of people who suffer bereavement I thought that there were sort of good ways of doing it and if I was diligent and did my homework I would get through it but actually you just have to let it do what it wants to do to you there's nothing you can do about it so David says it was followed by lockdown and in a way that sort of served me it's a bit selfish to talk about lockdown in that way but it meant I was just stuck at home on my own so just in the end I can remember just sort of sitting back and thinking oh I'll just let this go through me at its own pace and that was and that's what happened.

26:50And how long after your period of isolation I suppose in lockdown and also bereavement and grief did you feel ready to jump into a relationship? Oh well gosh it was so David died and I thought, well, I would never, I thought that was me done. Not in a sort of Miss Havisham sort of way, but I just couldn't imagine mustering what you need to muster in order to get together with someone again. And then three years after he died, I woke up one morning and I thought, I felt like a polar bear waking from hibernation. And I thought, oh, I want a juicy seal. Actually, that sounds, it doesn't sound right.

27:28I just woke up and thought, All of a sudden, I know what it was now. I think I'd lived enough life around the loss to have something that I could share with someone. And I knew there would be other people out there in similar circumstances. And then my nephew and my nieces encouraged me to get on the apps. And I found an app for old gays, basically. And that's where I met. What is the, can you share the name of this app? Well, I'm embarrassed to say it because it sounds so preposterous, but it's called Elite Singles. There's a gay corner of elite singles. Okay. And that's, but basically what I wanted, I just wanted to meet people who were like me.

28:02I didn't want to meet someone who was looking for a prosperous older gay, if you see what I mean. Yeah, yeah. I wanted a peer. And how many times did you have to swipe before you met Richard? Well, I didn't know how to swipe. So there were three people I'd sort of talked to before I talked to. Richard was the first person I actually met. And the minute we met, the gayest date, old gay date, imaginable which was a trip to a royal horticultural society garden in winter so we walked around looking at these sort of jasmines lots of twigs everywhere lots of twigs then we went had a lentil salad vastly overpriced lentil salad in the calf and he went for a pee and then my phone pinged and it was from my friend kev and he sent me someone sitting in the next table have taken a picture of us and posted it on Twitter.

28:56No! Within 20 seconds it was on my phone. And anyway, I didn't say anything, but that's fine. They sat there after that? Well, they sat there and then we all went to the gift shop and we were buying tea towels or trays, the kind of thing you buy at those places. And this guy was on his run. I wondered if he was taking follow-up supplementary pictures. I'm not sure. But it was a bit awkward on a first date to have your lunch, and you're a lunch companion. But Richard is an actor, so he's used to the life that you're surrounded by. Well, he doesn't like... His father was famous, so he grew up with a famous dad and he doesn't particularly like that.

29:37He loves his work and he loves what he does, but he's not interested in the spotlight when he's off the stage. And also, I need it all anyway. Are you the attention seeker in the relationship? I think it would be fair to say yes. It's good to know your roles, isn't it, though? Yeah, complementary. How much is music still an escape for you? Oh, it's more than an escape to me. It's the medium through which I most readily feel and think and engage with the world, I think. So I love music, always have done. And in my retirement, I've gone back to playing the piano. I'm trying to play properly. I mean, I started off playing the piano And then I went to the pop music and started playing in a different way.

30:20And now I'm going back to playing the classical repertoire. I'm having piano lessons. It's fantastic. How is that for the piano teacher? That must be quite daunting teaching you. No, not really. He's not daunted by me at all. In fact, he's really good. He gives me just really focused, practical advice. I was having a lesson the other day. He just said, put your second finger on that B. I thought, why would you do that? And I did it. and I immediately saw why it was just better. So he's very good. He looks at me and says, do that, do that, do that. If you were to take a grade, what level are you at right now in terms of where he's teaching you then?

30:58Oh, well, I think I'm probably past my grades. Right, OK. So you're beyond grades, so you're an excellent piano player, obviously. Well, I'm not excellent. I'm a reasonably competent piano player. I'd like to be a better piano player. I'll never be a brilliant piano player, but I'd like to be a better piano player. And it just gives me so much pleasure. and here's the thing here's a lesson from my late midlife when i was a young peer so i played the music i used to play when i was 17 when technically i was probably my best and i'm not i don't have the technique anymore though i'm getting better but i'm a better musician and the reason is i don't go at it like a bullet at gate and if i got to a complicated couple of bars in the past i'd kind of bust my way through it and just hit the pedal you know whereas and now i just take it apart and And I put it back together and I just learn how to do it properly.

31:45And that's different. And that's really good. I'm enjoying that. Learning new things is obviously really important as we get older in terms of keeping our brain and our neural pathways open. You did Strictly, which is a whole different set of skills for you. Because while there is the musicality needed there, how much had you done in the way of that level of movement with your body in your life? Zero. Before, yeah. Yeah, and it showed. I mean, I loved doing Strictly, but I discovered simultaneously with 10 million other people that I was incapable of dance, which was useful. You had the amazing Diane Boswell.

32:22So glorious. So fantastic. It was Diane's first Strictly and poor old thing got me. But she's done OK since then. But she was lovely. We had a laugh. She's amazing. We did a programme together called Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof. So we lived in a tent together for about three weeks with other people. and she's an incredible person and anybody who asks me about her when she's on Australia, what you see with Diane is that is it. She is that person. She's that genuine and that kind. If I had to be stuck in a tent, Diane would be very high on my list of people I'd be stuck in a tent with. We'd have dinner and we had nowhere to go.

32:57We had no phones. We had no iPads. We had no musical instruments, although we did improvise because Owen Wyn Evans asked for drumsticks so that we could all learn to drum on things. and then I would ask her just to teach me some dance moves and she'd gladly kind of pick you up and guide you around the room and she's a superb person. I was so happy for her last year and what she did. Yeah, but you're a gymnast and so I imagine dance and choreography and the thing I found really hard, Gabby, was I could just about figure out where my feet had to be but I couldn't figure out where they needed to be next.

33:34well that would probably be like me learning the saxophone you know i see these fingers they need to be there to create this noise where's the next one although there is a lot of musicality i think in you know you have to feel music in you when you dance i think and that you know i i feel like i probably should have tried to learn learn instruments a lot earlier in my life i dip into the piano every now and again because it's there it's in my hall i walk past and i think i'm gonna We're going to really get to know you one day. We're going to really get on well, play a few things and then walk away.

34:04But I like having it there as a constant reminder that I'm failing on it. I couldn't get rid of it because that's just giving in. So, yeah, it must be such a joy, though, to sit and just while away hours doing something. Well, it's a challenge as well. It's a really tough challenge and sometimes it's immensely frustrating. But I like that, you know, I think to really learn, to really engage with something. is a wonderful thing. This is quite a deep subject to jump into, but we have just touched on mortality. So as a vicar, what's your take on our country's move towards assisted dying? And how much have you been asked to espouse about that?

34:47Well, I'm not in favour, actually. For two reasons. One is a sort of practical one, so that I know through the care of elderly dependent people how easy it might be to think of the reason why you might hasten your own demise for one way or another. And the other one is that in spite of my innate pessimism, I do try to think of life as a gift, not always an easy gift, but something that's essentially not ours, I suppose, and that I would like to think, all things being equal and where that's endurable, that we assist people to live rather than assist people to die. Hmm. It's such a tough one, isn't it, for people to have the space to think about, I think.

35:33Yeah. And I get the arguments and I've been around enough deathbeds to know how gruelling and sometimes torturous they can be. There is no, there is nothing good about suffering. Actually, it's all from the morning. but I think there is something irreducibly precious about life and we must uphold it and protect it as best we can. Of course I don't want to be absolutely rigidly 100 % certain about these things because I can't be that and in the past I've been in situations where people would apply palliative care in such a way that it probably made death come a little bit more quickly than it might have done otherwise and that seems to me to be humane and sensible.

36:20I just think it's such a dangerous path to go down and to legislate for it in this way. I think there's so many flaws in the legislation, so many things to be concerned about. I think, or I don't think, it's a good step.

36:51And again, like a gear change that the one show would be proud of, we haven't talked about your time in the jungle. Yeah. How easy was it to make that decision to do that show? Very hard. I didn't want to do it. And in the end, they made me an offer I couldn't refuse. And the minute they did that, I sort of leaned into it a little bit. And then I met the producer. and she was so great, so much fun and also told me the truth. I asked her questions to which I knew the answer and it was perhaps a difficult answer to see if she would tell me the truth and she did. And then I thought, oh, this might be fun.

37:26And then once I'd sort of resolved to do it, then I thought, oh, yeah, I look forward to it. And was it everything that you thought, the fun bits were fun, but the bits that were boring were boring? So much more fun than I thought it would be. I mean, I thought I'd get a bromance and I did, but it was with a 25-year-old lesbian. So that was exciting. And I thought the jungle would be awful, miserable, horrible, wet and horrid. And I loved it. I slept better than I've ever slept. Really? But the best thing was the other people. We had such a good time. And even the horrors. I mean, the eatings, I couldn't really do any of the physical trials.

38:01So I knew I was going to do a lot of eating stuff. And I did. And 70 % of it, not as bad as you think. 30 % of it, worse than you think. I imagine it's the smell before it even hits your lips. of that kind of food is it yeah yeah there's a bit there's this fermented herring thing and you get this ammoniac hit at the back of your nose before the slurry and does does your stomach respond quite quickly yeah you just have to there is a there's a sort of mental discipline you have to apply what i kept thinking was if i do this we'll get a star and if we get a star we'll get food and if we get food we'll have a happy camp so much of it was about morale really and we did well we did i mean we all powered our way through there were very few nights where we went without something to eat although we spent the whole time talking about cheese and red wine did you learn anything more about humans and humanity i think i learned that there are some deep rhythms in our, in being human, that you perhaps discover if you're out in the wild a bit, really, or sitting around a campfire or looking for wood and trying to make something to eat and boil your water and all the rest of it.

39:20There's something about it that I, my idea of roughing it would be a suite at Claridge's. Do you know what I mean? It's not really my, not that I ever get a suite at Claridge's, but that would be my ideal. So the jungle, I thought I'd find really tough. and actually I really loved it. You get to shower, don't you? But do you ever feel really clean when you're in? No, and you don't get to shower. You get to wash in a creek. I mean, I kind of thought there'd be a proper loo and a proper shower just off camera, but there really isn't. And if you've got a task, I mean, often you're covered in horrible fish guts and cockroaches and everything.

39:53And you're often hanging around on a hot, sultry day and that stuff for hours before you get back to the creek. You get a chance to wash it off and you wash your clothes in the creek. So no, you were never properly clean. You were just sometimes a bit less dirty. I quite like that though. You get used to it quite quickly. And also there was something quite liberating about it, thinking I really don't, I got stuck in London yesterday and I ended up having a night in London and I was planning to go home. So I had no toiletries and I had to sort of rush to get to Boots to get some sort of ultra-sensitive antiperspirant.

40:26I thought, what the hell am I doing? This is a ridiculous thing. been anywhere and if you all smell it's fine well actually in the camp i know this because we had visitors coming and my brother will came and i said i'm sorry but i'm gonna really stink and he said oh you smell smell off his wood smoke you smell like it overpowers everything doesn't it if you sit around by a fire in summertime you know on a night out or something and your hair holds it or your clothes hold it for a long time don't they so that's that's probably quite a good thing maybe that's maybe that's part of you know mother nature's plan i'm going to make wood burning smell so strong they can't smell their terrible body odor nature's nature's incredible and you got to spend time with colleen rooney that's did you know colleen before no i knew about her because i've been fascinated by the whole wag of the christy thing and i was aware of a big fan of her husband's football and i sort of didn't know what to expect really and she's absolutely wonderful i'm sure you know her and uh one of the great pleasures of being there was getting It's no cold.

41:26Yeah, and she did that. She did a brilliant thing of being able to open up, but not so much that she was exposing her family. And I think the key to those programmes is you can't be a kind of, you know, all guarded and try not to say anything. You have to be yourself, don't you? But in a way that your family and friends feel respected. Did you struggle with that at all? No. I've never been particularly guarded. It would not be an adjective that would be commonly applied to me. It was interesting watching Cole because I think at first I thought maybe she would be guarded because, you know, she's had paparazzi in her life since she was a teenager, understandably guarded.

42:02But I realized after a while it was shyness, actually, and that Colleen is at heart a very straightforward person. She loves her family. She looks after her kids. She's a very close to her parents. She loves her husband. She's a carer. She's just a really lovely person to be around. And I just really enjoyed her company. angling all the time for an invitation to their house because I want to see a media room. We see it on Zoom sometimes. I've never actually been there yet. Yeah, I work with Wayne quite a lot now on Champions League. So I'm similarly angling for an invite there. Maybe maybe there.

42:41One MasterChef you mentioned earlier, are you tonight preparing something lovely for Friday night dinner? Are you a regular cook? I've got some lamb's kidneys in the fridge which need eating. So I will get home and I will make some devil kidneys on sourdough toast with watercress. That's just the simplicity of that. It's the flavours of the kidney. Well done. That sounds amazing. Will Richard have that? Is he away at the moment working or is he around? We've just been away. So we were up in, we're staying with friends in Wiltshire and then we've been in Stratford-on-Ave and went to see a play that some friends visiting.

43:12And I'm in London at the moment. So we're meeting actually on Sunday. How lovely. Well, I will let you go and enjoy your weekend. And thank you so much for spending time with us here on The Midpoint. I think definitely a midpoint here in terms of the challenges you set yourself and the adventures that you've been on over the last 10 years or so, I think indicate that joie de vie and that sense that life is for getting hold of. And I think that must be applauded. Well, absolutely. Thanks for being a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you, Richard.

43:46Well as he mentioned Richard's new podcast The Apple and the Tree is out now and it really is excellent and Richard has 12 books to his name too including crime series The Canon Clement Mysteries so be sure to check them out if you're an avid reader Big thanks again to the Reverend Richard Coles to Spiritland Creative and to you for keeping me company Couldn't do it without you Join me again next Wednesday when I'll be sitting down with the brilliant personal trainer and internet sensation during COVID, Caroline Idians, to talk about keeping fit at 50 before and beyond. Bye-bye for now.