and battled drug addiction in his past. Strictly Come Dancing's latest signing Reverend Richard Coles has opened up on his drug addiction past and admitted he lied about having HIV to get 'sympathy'.
The unassuming Radio 4 presenter, 55, admitted there was a 'dark glamour' about the infection which he 'liked' - and he kept up the lie for a staggering five years.
Coles, who was the fifth contestant to be announced for Strictly, bared all about his troubled past in two explosive autobiographies.
He took a blood test and rejoined The Communards - who enjoyed a Number 1 hit in 1986 with Don’t Leave Me This Way - in Switzerland.
Richard said: 'I limped around the stage and stood half-heartedly at the keyboard. I think my morose mood irritated Jimmy because one night we had an argument.'
Despite not having his blood test results back yet, he shut down the row by blurting out that he was HIV positive.
'In the thick of it I said, "I'm ill, I've just discovered I'm HIV positive — get off my back". Jimmy was taken aback. "I'm sorry, doll", he said,' Coles recalled.
In fact, the test came back negative. But Coles admits he had come to enjoy the fiction he had created, confessing: 'Saying it got me sympathy, which I liked.'
He told one interviewer: ‘The harder part to admit was that there was a dark glamour to being HIV-positive, there was this drama and I was drawn to that.’
It was only after he found God in 1990 – after a tentative visit to a ‘Technicolor’ High Anglican church – that he found the courage to admit the truth.
The Reverend has described how his 20s and 30s were a riot of anonymous casual sex, class-A drugs, jealousy and lies.
At the peak of his fame, the bespectacled ‘music geek’ spent a lost year in Ibiza on what he describes as a ‘massive drugs binge’ and enjoyed numerous sexual encounters in a rural lay-by with random male strangers — one of them, at Christmas, with a man completely naked apart from a bow of tinsel around his genitals.
The Reverend once declared that dogging — having sex with strangers in public places — ‘was one of the great liberations of my life’.
The most candid of these confessions are recalled in Coles’ 2014 autobiography Fathomless Riches: Or How I Went from Pop to Pulpit.
Born in Northampton, Coles was one of three brothers. He realised he was gay at the age of 16 while at a minor boys’ public school.
He repeatedly played his parents Tom Robinson’s track Glad To Be Gay until they guessed, but they were ‘nothing but supportive’, he said.
After a stint at drama school in Stratford-upon-Avon, he fled to London where he bought a saxophone, resolved to become a pop star and met Somerville.
‘But what really diverted my attention was ecstacy,’ he writes in Fathomless Riches. ‘It was like an explosion of delight going off in our heads.’
Of one particular clandestine encounter, he explains: ‘Like many gay men after a family Christmas, I decided to seek the comfort of strangers… I pulled into a lay-by, hidden by woodland… a car was parked in the darkness… a figure got out… it was a man, doing a dance, and he was completely naked apart from a bow of tinsel… Merry Christmas, I thought: Happy Feast of the Nativity.’
His confessions have re-emerged as it was announced that he is a new addition to Strictly Come Dancing's upcoming series.
Reverend Richard is the only Vicar in Britain to have had a number one hit single, Don't Leave Me This Way.
He was also an inspiration for the main character in the BBC hit comedy Rev and served as consultant to the series, and is Vicar of St Mary's Church in Finedon, Northamptonshire and Chancellor of the University of Northampton.
Reverend Richard joins the likes of Gemma Atkinson, Ruth Langsford, Davood Ghadami and Mollie King who have also been confirmed for the new series
On Thursday, Gemma was announced and said of her new gig: 'I am really flattered they have asked me, I never thought the words would be coming out of my mouth. I am more likely to fit in on a show like Gladiators, but that's why I wanted to do it, it's a challenge.'
The 15th series of the BAFTA award-winning entertainment show produced by BBC Studios will return in the autumn on BBC One, and has slowly been releasing the line up as the week has gone on, with the latest news revealed on Thursday on BBC Breakfast.
'I'm a massive fan and I'm always very flattered when my name is in the mix,' she told Express earlier this summer, hinting that she has been asked before. 'They haven't confirmed anything yet. If they asked me to do the show I would absolutely love to do it.'
She also said she wouldn't care which of the pro dancers she'd like to be partnered with. - simply that she is just excited to learn how to dance from a professional.
She also insisted that her husband is in the audience every week.
'What sort of marriage is this? I thought it was going to be me,' Eamonn joked after the announcement was made on Wednesday.
No comments: