He entered the jungle five days late with his co-star Maura Higgins, and it’s fair to say he made quite the entrance.
star Reverend Richard Coles has already wowed viewers with his cheeky personality and can-do attitude in the camp.
At the end of the week, it was announced that Danny Jones sand Barry McGuigan was appointed as camp leaders, with the religious figure teaming up with his former Strictly co-star Oti Mabuse as cooks for the week.
Since then, the pair have grown closer as they cook up a storm for their fellow contestants Down Under. But the surprising duo left fans emotional on Tuesday (November 16), after the clergymen opened up about the death of his late husband David Oldham.
As the 62-year-old wins over the nation on the reality show, let’s take a look inside his love life away from the cameras.
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Reverend Richard Coles met his husband David in 2007 (Image: Instagram)
Richard and David began their relationship in 2007 and it didn’t take long before sparks flew between the pair. Three years later, they entered into a civil partnership, and David took Richard’s surname.
At the time, Richard assured the church that their relationship was celibate, but he recently confessed that this was a lie to enable him to keep his job as a vicar. In an interview with The Times, he admitted: “I felt sometimes like I was in the resistance and they were the Gestapo.
“I’m not the first person to find themselves obliged to lie for institutional reasons in the Church of England.” At the time, the star worked as a vicar at St Mary The Virgin Church on Finedon, near Peterborough, from 2011 to 2022.
But in 2019, tragedy struck the pair when his husband Reverend David Coles died just days before Christmas. His partner, who was also a clergyman, was only 43 when he died of liver disease, caused by an alcohol addiction that had gripped him since he was a teenager.
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His husband sadly died of liver disease aged 43 back in 2022 (Image: ITV)
Richard once he explained why he wanted to keep the painful detail of his partner’s alcoholism private. He said: “I often think if someone dies of drink as people used to say, that people filed them under a sort of tragic, squalid death.
“David was so much more than that. I wanted to get a sense of why David was so important to those who loved him before we got to a discussion of what killed him.”
He also addressed the grief and loss after his husband David died following his battle with alcoholism, admitting that his passing “messed his f***ing life up”.
He told the publication: “I’m angry when people speak in a way that means they think you should be over it. It’s not a cold.” On the ITV show, he opened up about his loss further to the mum-of-one. He confessed: “I miss him. And I want him to walk in the door.
“I had a dream he walked in and he was just carrying a co-op bag, just like he’d been shopping and I said to him, ‘I thought you were dead’, and he said, ‘No, I was just out shopping’.
“I said, ‘It’s nice to see you, thanks for coming back’ to which he said, ‘Oh, I’m not staying, I met somebody else’. But he’s just a massive hole in my heart and I’m living my life around that loss and I’ve met Dickie now, and that’s great.
“So, we’re in a relationship now together, but I just miss David very much.” Richard has since found love as he shared last year that he was happily coupled up with Dickie Cant who is the son of late actor and Play Away presenter Brian Cant.
The pair met on a dating app, and it is understood Dickie made the first move. Richard revealed that Dickie doesn’t care about fame, and that he in turn doesn’t mind that Dickie is atheist.
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