Reverend Richard Coles has revealed that he broke the law by burying people with their pet’s ashes during his time at a Northamptonshire church.
The former Bronski Beat star-turned-priest, 64, admitted to doing so to honour the last wishes of his parishioners, slipping pets’ ashes into their coffins when the undertaker wasn’t looking.
Coles was a vicar at Northamptonshire’s St Mary the Virgin church between 2011 until 2022 before retiring.
Speaking to Dawn French at the Hay Festival on Saturday (23 May), he said: “It is illegal to bury a dog’s ashes with a body. The reason is that there are different jurisdictions over the disposal of remains. Human remains are one thing, and all other remains are another thing.
“So I would quite often go to the undertaker – I can’t tell you this, I am breaking the law – with the dog’s ashes and say, ‘Have you screwed down Mrs Haversedge?’ And they’d say, ‘Not yet,’ and I’d say, ‘Look at that bird!’”
He said that he would then quietly place the pet’s ashes in the coffin. “There is a wideness to God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea, and it’s our job to live in accordance with that,” he added.
“I know that my predecessors didn’t really care,” referring to other vicars at the church who would allow unbaptised parishioners and those who died by suicide to be buried in the churchyard despite the rules stating that they must be buried in a separate area.
“They would extend mercy, because there are no limits to God’s mercy,” Coles said.
Pet burials are heavily regulated in the UK, with only certain cemeteries allowing humans and pets to be buried together.
Coles found fame in 1980s bands Bronski Beat and the Communards, finding success with the hit cover version of “Don’t Leave Me This Way”. After the Communards split in 1988, he studied theology and became a priest in 2005.
He’s since presented various BBC Two and BBC Radio 4 shows and competed on a number of reality competitions, from Celebrity Mastermind and Strictly to I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! – coming third on the latter.
While in the jungle in 2024, Coles opened up about being a gay reverend, saying that he’s “never given it a moment’s twinge of anxiety over whether God thought it was alright or not”.
“Whether other people thought it was alright or not, well I’m happy to have that argument,” he said. “Also, I was not the first. Sometimes I look at documents from the early church, or the church of the middle ages and I just think – so gay.”
