This much I know: Rev Richard Coles

I was an insufferable child. I’d walk around Kettering with a deer stalker and magnifying glass because I wanted to be Sherlock Holmes, and was obviously pushed into nettles by the rough boys. I was precocious, nerdy, swotty, a mummy’s boy. I was convinced I’d been snatched from a cradle somewhere more exciting and needed to discover my true destiny.

My father taught me gentleness, as well as a love of music and landscape. My mum taught me drive, nature and comedy; she made me laugh every day.

I was a chorister from eight years old. I loved the music and being in a chapel; the architecture and clergy. It was fascinating and compelling, but rationally I thought, “Fairy tale nonsense”, I didn’t believe any of it, so along with two friends we started the Chapel Choir Atheist Club.

When I came out, I played mum, Sing If You’re Glad To Be Gay by Tom Robinson five times. As soon as I was aware of sexual desire, it was obvious where my mind was going. It wasn’t news my parents wanted to hear, but I never doubted they loved me. I didn’t realise how rare that was until I was older.

My late 20s were the best and worst of times. After the Communards [the band he formed in 1985 with Jimmy Somerville], HIV and Aids smashed into my circle. I started wanting to connect with church again. The minute I walked through the door I thought, “This is for me, now.”

Fame, like riches, is wasted on the young: you don’t know what to do with it. I was on the dole and utterly ignominious before the Communards, then overnight I was rich and people wanted to be my friend. Notoriety shouldn’t come until you’re over 40, or posthumously preferably.

It all gets very exciting when we die, I think. We imitate in this life what’s to come, but it’ll be nothing like we imagine. I really hope my dogs come running towards me through the long grass.

Never get impatient with people at the pay station in a hospital car park because it could be the worst day of their life. Grief is all about learning to live. You learn some really hard lessons about loss. You can’t diminish the pain, but it’s about how you carry on living afterwards. I became more sympathetic.

“We are put on Earth, this little space, that we might learn to bear the beams of love.” William Blake wrote that. I find it to be beautiful.

You never get used to performing: your pulse rate going up and your adrenaline squirting. I use it as fuel rather than something to trip me up. Nerves are my friend now.

I get recognised quite a lot, and more by young people because of the jungle. Having been invisible to them for 40 years, they now go, ‘Rev! I loved you in the jungle. Can I have a selfie?’ I love it.

My life has been a golden one. Pretty much untouched by strife, war, conflict, need or poverty and that’s not normal. You just have to switch on the television to see how tough life is for most people. I’m grateful every day that I got so lucky.

Photograph by David Levenson/Getty Images