Reverend Richard Coles has admitted to breaking the law by burying people with their pets' ashes during his tenure at a Northamptonshire church. The 64-year-old former Bronski Beat star turned priest confessed to slipping the ashes into coffins when the undertaker was not looking, fulfilling the final wishes of his parishioners.
Coles served as vicar at St Mary the Virgin church in Northamptonshire from 2011 until his retirement in 2022. Speaking at the Hay Festival on Saturday (23 May) alongside Dawn French, he explained the legal prohibition: "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."
He described his covert method: "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 would then quietly place the pet's ashes into the coffin.
Coles justified his actions by invoking divine mercy: "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 that his predecessors at the church similarly extended mercy by allowing unbaptised parishioners and those who died by suicide to be buried in the churchyard, despite rules requiring separate burial areas. "They would extend mercy, because there are no limits to God's mercy," he said.
In the UK, pet burials are heavily regulated, with only certain cemeteries permitting the interment of humans and pets together. Coles, who rose to fame in the 1980s with Bronski Beat and the Communards, studied theology after the Communards split in 1988 and became a priest in 2005. He has since presented BBC Two and BBC Radio 4 shows and participated in reality competitions such as Celebrity Mastermind, Strictly Come Dancing, and I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!, where he finished third. During his time in the jungle in 2024, Coles spoke openly about being a gay reverend, stating he has "never given it a moment's twinge of anxiety over whether God thought it was alright or not."
