The Rev Richard Coles came out to his mother Elizabeth with a song. He was 16, it was 1978 and he played her Tom Robinson's Glad To Be Gay four times on repeat before she asked: "Darling, are you trying to tell me something?"
The former Strictly star, 61, took a while to make peace with his sexuality, attempting suicide and being diagnosed with clinical depression. But he went onto find love, beginning a relationship with David Oldham, a fellow Anglican priest, in 2007.
Three years later the pair entered into a civil partnership and David took Richard's surname. At the time, Richard assured the church their relationship was celibate but he recently confessed this was a lie to enable him to keep his job as a vicar. In an interview with The Times, he said: "I felt sometimes like I was in the resistance and they were the Gestapo."
The star tragically lost his husband David in 2019 (Collect Unknown)"I’m not the first person to find themselves obliged to lie for institutional reasons in the Church of England," added the vicar, who worked at St Mary The Virgin Church in Finedon, near Peterborough, from 2011 to 2022.
Sadly, David died of alcoholism in 2019 aged just 42 after becoming increasingly ill with liver disease. Richard went onto write his book The Madness of Grief: A Memoir of Love and Loss, a personal account of life after loss.
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Richard is now dating actor Dickie Cant, joking dipping his toes into the dating game was like "a polar bear coming out of hibernation and looking for a seal". The former vicar has even suggested the relationship could be headed towards marriage.
"I wanted to meet someone who had been around the block and wanted to share a life with someone," he said of meeting 59-year-old Dickie, who has starred in Mary Queen of Scots and Doctor Who. "I thought I was out of the game when David died."
Watch Richard on Hamza: Escape to the Wilderness on Together TV, tonight at 7pm
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