How I’m A Celebrity’s Reverend Richard Coles was ‘destroyed’ by his husband’s death from alcoholism aged 43

From starring in pop band The Communards to twirling around the dancefloor on Strictly while being the UK’s most famous priest, Reverend Richard Coles jokingly refers to himself as a ‘borderline national trinket’.

But despite his upbeat persona and good humour, when the 63-year-old makes his grand arrival on I’m A Celebrity this week after jetting to Australia as a late arrival, he brings with him his own burden of heartbreak. 

Richard tragically lost his husband, fellow priest David, 43, to alcoholism in December 2019 – nine years after they married – and said  part of him had been destroyed by the loss during a ‘paralysing’ period of sadness.

Before his husband’s death, he and David lived with their dogs Daisy, Pongo, Audrey and Horatio in the vicarage of St Mary’s in Finedon.

Speaking about his loss, in 2022, Rev Coles said: ‘I was absolutely with David through thick and thin, and I was with him till the very end.

‘If you really love someone, part of you is destroyed when they die. I don’t want to pretend that’s not the case. I sometimes feel the tension that I will leave him behind.

‘And I would never have left him behind. I feel a tinge of disloyalty in living more life without him.’

Richard has since found love again with actor Dickie Cant but he won’t be flying to Australia to greet him because of work commitments. 

Of entering the jungle, he said: ‘I will miss my partner a lot and of those I have told, they all think it’s hilarious I’m doing this. They have told me not to talk too much – especially first thing in the morning.’ 

Richard met actor Dickie, who is is the son of the late actor and Play Away presenter Brian on the dating site Elite Singles which is for people who are ‘serious about dating’. 

Explaining his choice of dating site, Richard said last year: ‘I wanted to go on a website where I would meet someone who was not looking for a sugar daddy, who was my age, who lived in my sort of world, who I could share my life with.’

Richard, who shot to fame in his twenties as one half of pop band The Communards with Jimmy Somerville, has continued to enjoy life in the public eye, appearing on shows including The Chase and Strictly Come Dancing, as well as winning BBC One’s Celebrity MasterChef Christmas Cook-Off. 

He met his late husband after David approached Richard for advice on joining the clergy and although they soon developed romantic feelings for each other, they initially were not intimate with each other. 

In his memoir, The Madness of Grief, Richard wrote about living with someone in the grips of alcohol addiction – and the ‘paralysing’ period of sadness that followed.

While in his 2022 Channel 4 documentary Good Grief, Richard said: ‘I was absolutely with David through thick and thin, and I was with him till the very end.

‘If you really love someone, part of you is destroyed when they die. I don’t want to pretend that’s not the case. I sometimes feel the tension that I will leave him behind.

‘And I would never have left him behind. I feel a tinge of disloyalty in living more life without him.’

In an interview with The Guardian in 2021, Rev Richard heartbreakingly admitted that he ‘neglected important things’.

He told the publication: ‘I realised, suddenly, that in trying to fill my life with as much incident and interest as I could I had neglected important things of home and hearth. 

‘I wish I’d spent more time with David. I wish I’d prioritised doing nothing with David more. Not seeing that as a holiday from things, but as the centre of things.’

He continued: ‘I think anyone who has shared their life with an addict, particularly someone who has died as a result of that addiction, you are beset by the various guilts that come with that. ‘Should I have done more?’ That thought pecks and pecks away at you.’

At the time, Richard added David was the love of his life and he couldn’t imagine ‘ever having two of those’.

The Reverend retired from the clergy in 2022 because he felt he could no longer condone the way the Church of England ‘doesn’t treat people fairly’ in respect to its position on homosexuality.

In June, the TV star revealed despite maintaining celibacy at the beginning of their relationship, the couple didn’t maintain it through their nine-year marriage. 

In an interview with The Times in February, the former Communards star revealed he had lied to the church about the couple’s celibacy.

He said of his relationship with the church: ‘I felt sometimes like I was in the resistance and they were the Gestapo.’

Richard revealed why he chose not to be truthful while working for the church, saying he felt his former employers had ‘no moral cause, so I didn’t feel that I had a moral obligation at all.’

But after making the admission, Richard revealed he regretted it because of how much it offended people. 

He told The Telegraph: ‘It wasn’t something I nonchalantly decided to do. I thought it was better to lie than to deny myself and David, and others, the opportunity of an intimate relationship with another person, because that would be cruel.

‘I think lots of people in the Church never really understood the choices you have to make if you are gay and in a relationship.

‘When [honesty] could cost you your job, your home, your career, your parish, your parishioners, and that’s the reality…’

The Church of England allows clergy to have same-sex civil partnerships, but they’re expected to be celibate. 

Following his admission, Richard said he received hate mail full of threats with some telling him he’d burn in hell.  

The vile abuse he suffered came three years after David’s death shocked his parishioners, because he kept his ailing health private while battling illness for more than a year.

David, who was battling liver disease, was determined to keep the drinking problem that eventually killed him a secret.

Although David attempted to keep his health issues under wraps, there were public outbursts including one that involved the police, but despite the difficulties, Richard promised to love him to the end. 

After David died, Richard explained how he had asked his partner’s family for permission to share his experiences of life with an addict – in the hopes of helping others in the same situation.

In 2022, he appeared in a Channel 4 documentary where he met with different people across the UK to discuss the varying methods of coping with grief. 

During one particularly emotional moment, Richard visited a widow’s retreat on Isle of Bute, where he wrote a song for his late husband, reading aloud: ‘We came here I remember, it was 10 years ago. It was the first summer when the sea shift bloomed. You sang, I’ll love you till I die. And that you didn’t fail.’

Many of those watching the programme were left in floods of tears over the scene, with one writing: ‘Such a tender, thoughtful film about his own grief and that of others. The singing of his beautiful poem was transfixing…lump to the throat.’

The star admitted last June that he thought he was ‘out of the game’ after the death of his beloved husband.

Speaking on Lorraine, he said: ‘I wanted to meet someone who had been around the block and wanted to share a life with someone. I thought I was out of the game when David died.’

He added that after losing David, trying to date again made him feel like ‘a polar bear coming out of hibernation and looking for a seal’, but he admitted his confidence had been boosted through using a dating app. 

And that’s where he found love again with actor Dickie.

Dickie (Richard) Cant, who is from Kent, has starred in Mary Queen of Scots, Stan & Ollie and Doctor Who.

And although Richard would love his new boyfriend to be close by while he enters the Jungle, he explained that the actor has work commitments. 

He told The Daily Mail the It’s A Sin star is unable to travel Down Under because he is appearing in a play this month.

But Richard said: ‘He said it would be great for him to be three weeks without me snoring.’