Face to Face with Rev Richard Coles: 'I find myself praying for punk'

"That makes me think of Tom Cruise on a motorbike and I don't think I'm that," he laughs.

"I don't think of myself as a maverick at all. Quite the opposite – I really think of myself as quite conventional but dispersed over unusual territory."

That unusual territory started more than 30 years ago when the former member of Bronski Beat and The Communards was making music with Jimmy Somerville. He says of his Glaswegian partner, "He had a spectacular talent, extraordinary charisma, a degree of self-possession, fearless, undaunted, could be a nightmare, especially with some vodka inside him. I was sort of dazzled by him. But he was also high maintenance."

It's worth remembering quite how huge the Communards were back in the middle of the 1980s. Their cover of the Philly classic Don't Leave Me This Way was the biggest selling record of 1986 and has been a mainstay at wedding receptions ever since.

Nearly three decades on, he's here to talk about a new voyage into the charts.

The 55-year-old is playing DJ this time. He's selected 41 of his favourite festive songs just in time for a Christmas release.

Standing tall and sporting his dog collar, Coles is warm and welcoming as he sits next to a plate piled high with pastries in Sony's Kensington offices.

"I was sitting in Five Guys having a beef burger and Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree came on, which is great. But I wanted to get back to the original story.

"I wanted to put together a Christmas album that went back to the stable in Bethlehem and the source of it all. It kind of gets lost sometimes."

From Aled Jones' Candlelight Carol to Mario Lanza's The First Nowell, The Reverend Richard Coles – Songs For Christmas certainly does that, but doesn't he miss making his own music?

"I don't think there's any need to inflict my efforts on people particularly," he says drily.

Further probing reveals a little more enthusiasm.

"I guess part of me would like to have another go with Jimmy really ... he was the best singer I ever worked with. And he was just so exciting to work with too."

"Maybe for a charity thing," he ponders, fidgeting in his seat.

Jimmy of course is Jimmy Somerville, Coles' collaborator in both The Communards and Bronski Beat, but their friendship began before that.

Both young men escaped their home towns (Kettering for Coles, Glasgow, of course, for Somerville) for the neon lights of Soho and the idea that in Eighties London almost anything was possible.

"I lived in a squalid flat in King's Cross, Jimmy lived in a squat in Bloomsbury," he says. "You could sign on, you could live hand-to-mouth, and I just don't know how people could do that now.

"There's not room in it for a thousand flowers to bloom I guess, but maybe I'm just old."

"There was a pungency about the culture in the Eighties," he continues. "It created pungent music and record companies had the resources and were bothering to sign up new and exciting acts."

Perhaps unaware he is sitting inside the building which houses Simon Cowell's record label, Syco, he bemoans the X Factor's "supermarketed" output.

"Lots of great musicians do come through that but it does produce something which lacks that pungency," he adds.

"Do you know what?" he says after a short silence. "I frequently find myself praying for punk. For something to come along and upset everybody and ignite a few fires and behave disreputably."

Not words you would expect from a man of the cloth. But anyway, is he not aware of grime? The raw, aggressive, do-it-yourself culture born in London that has since spread from Aberystwyth to Aberdeen?

"Grime has rather passed me by," he says, beaming. "But I'm so glad to hear it's there. I'm more of a Wagner man these days which is grime for the over-50s."

He lives quite far from that pungent neon lights era of the Eighties, of course. His parish is in Finedon, Northamptonshire, but this is a man who is far from shy and retiring. His memoir, Fathomless Riches: Or How I Went From Pop to Pulpit, was a gloriously candid account of his younger years encompassing homosexuality, radical Trotskyism, membership of the Communards, copious drug-taking and the shadow of Aids.

He wrote of the pressures of Christmas. “Like many gay men after a family Christmas, I decided to seek the comfort of strangers, only where could I find a comforting stranger on a freezing cold Christmas night in the middle of Northamptonshire? I pulled into a lay-by, hidden by woodland, expecting it, on this most holy night, to be deserted, but it wasn’t. A car was parked in the darkness, the engine turning over but with no lights on. I parked in front of it, a few yards ahead, and noticed in my rear-view mirror something stir within. The headlights flashed. A signal. I switched on my interior light and switched it off again. After a moment the car’s headlights came on and stayed on. A figure got out and came and stood in front, illuminated by the headlamps. It was a man, doing a dance, and he was completely naked. Merry Christmas, I thought: Happy Feast of the Nativity.”

Cole is certainly a man who never stands still, and he's fresh from starring in this year's Strictly Come Dancing where, unfortunately, he was voted off after just three performances.

"It's quite brutal because it's so much fun," he says. "It was like being a kid and playing again with fantastic toys."

He had already planned an outfit for Blackpool – a cassock for the Argentine Tango, he admits with a laugh.

Despite his early exit, the Reverend is still following the show's progress.

"I actually put 50 quid on Joe (McFadden)," he says, bucking the stereotype of your bog-standard vicar once again.

"Strictly is just so bling. You have clouds coming down from the ceiling and a fantastic band and a really enthusiastic audience."

Coles' Christmas is usually pretty busy, with Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and then a service early the next morning. But this year he's hoping to find enough time for whisky and, funnily enough, horror series The Walking Dead.

"It's hideous work. But after lunch we get into our pyjamas and watch the telly. I have to have a Wonderful Life and The Sound of Music ... although I'm quite into The Walking Dead at the moment and I'm saving some zombie material for Christmas because I love it so much."

Nothing should really be a surprise with Coles – but this conversation began with him concerned that people are forgetting the true meaning of Christmas so him airing his love for zombies is a little unexpected.

"The things I worry about with religion isn't to do much with forgetting Christmas," he says. "It's to do with religion being angry and violent."

After a moment of silence he adds thoughtfully: "I wish people would connect with what we have to offer more and I think we have to ask ourselves lots of searching questions about why we are no longer persuasive to people.

"I often think people are hungry and we give them a menu they can't read and a language they don't understand."

The Reverend Richard Coles – Songs For Christmas is out now.