The Reverend Richard Coles is an English musician, writer, Church of England priest, and co-presenter of Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4. He 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.
He is the author of Fathomless Riches, Bringing in the Sheaves, Lives and Legends of the Improbable Saints, and most recently, The Madness of Grief, which was a Sunday Times bestseller. His debut mystery novel Murder Before Evensong was published by Hachette in June 2022. The second of the series about Canon Daniel Clement will be published in June 2023.
