Grief-stricken Rev Coles picks his ideal woman for a happy retirement

HE HAS variously been a pop icon, broadcaster, vicar — and most recently a bereft widower following the death, 15 months ago, of his beloved civil partner and fellow clergyman David, after the latter’s protracted battle with alcohol.

But I can disclose that the Rev Richard Coles, one-time multi- instrumentalist in 1980s duo The Communards, is now preparing for arguably the most improbable development in his extraordinary life — moving in with a woman.

Lorna Gradden was once manager of The Communards but is now living on the South Coast, where 59- year- old Coles plans to join her when he retires.

Currently vicar of Finedon in Northamptonshire, he describes Lorna as one of his ‘oldest friends’, and has a characteristically acute vision of their prospective new life in Sussex. ‘It sounds exactly like Mapp and Lucia, and I’m sure it will be,’ he says, alluding to the classic novels by E. F. Benson. It was to Lorna that Coles turned in the days after David’s death, aged only 42, in December 2019, driving down to see her.

And it was Lorna who accompanied him home to the vicarage in Finedon after David’s funeral when, in his words, grief flowed up from within him ‘like lava’.

Coles recalled: ‘I had this conversation with David’s mum where she said, “Don’t write yourself off. Go out there, meet someone, have a new life. It’s what David would have wanted.” I thought, “Actually, David would have much rather I was sitting at home in a black shawl, stirring a pot of polenta.” ’

Lorna is, he says, the closest to another partner anyone can currently be. But, ultimately, he plans to return to Northamptonshire, to be buried next to David.

‘Though the date of my occupancy is still a matter of speculation at the moment . . . I know I will rejoin him. He was a flawed person, like I am, but I deeply, deeply loved him.’