I remember in one parish a terrible row over the ideal size of mince pies, and in another two great ladies dashing trays of pancakes to the vicarage floor in a controversy over whether to roll or to fold. But the real arena for food combat is television.

Richard Coles

I can't turn the clock back but I can seek the forgiveness of those I've wronged.

Generally on a Saturday I come home wreathed in media glamour having interviewed a former Krankie or someone, and suddenly I am back in the world of orange blossom and bells.

Richard Coles

Home World Wed

I still feel a spike of anticipation when 'O Come, O Come, Emmanuel' strikes up and, in these andropausal years, I am unexpectedly moved by 'Away in a Manger'.

Richard Coles

Anger Years Year

Like most people, I cook about a dozen dishes, over and over again, and to stretch the menu has meant stretching my competence to breaking point.

Richard Coles

Pet Men Zen

I'm looking for some centrist political party to find a home in and it's not there, actually.

Richard Coles

Home Art T

Music has given me a decent pension. I am in that rare position for a clergyman of having some provision for my retirement. Thank you, young people of Europe.

Richard Coles

Music Men Young People

The first Christians were formed by the first Easter into a new community that transcended all other commitments, encompassing the tax collector Matthew, a lackey of the occupying Romans, and Simon the Zealot, an insurrectionist.

Richard Coles

Men Easter Zeal

I don't think of myself as a maverick at all. Quite the opposite - I really think of myself as quite conventional but dispersed over unusual territory.

Richard Coles

Vent Usual Us

I was born into the Church of England but in the most nominal way possible you can imagine, so it's Christmas and Easter. And then like a great many clergy in the Church of England I actually got nobbled by being a chorister.

Richard Coles

Great Easter Christmas

Jesus comes among us, in our all division, not to instruct, comfort or inspire but to die. In doing so, He answers the sum of our self-regard, stupidity and cruelty.

Richard Coles

Vision Us Up

My dachshunds are not substitutes for children. But the pattering of tiny feet around the place is a joy.

Richard Coles

UN Tiny Tin

In my opinion, the best of the knockout cookery series is 'MasterChef', which I have watched since Loyd Grossman's day, back in the 1990s.

Richard Coles

Which Watched Watch

I don't think you need to justify faith, faith is its own justification.

Richard Coles

Faith You Us

Grandpa Keith made shoes for Adam Faith and George Best. I was dazzled by such people. As a teenager, I was haunted by the idea of people living glamorously beyond my provincial horizons.

Richard Coles

Teen Faith Age

But it's true I hadn't realised quite how much the discipleship of Jesus Christ would involve keeping up with email.

Richard Coles

Would Wit Us

I completely understand why people would find the Church intolerable. I'm not the least bit surprised when people seek to leave it, though I miss them and I wish they'd stay. But I sometimes think you leave to come back, and that's certainly true in my case.

Richard Coles

Time You Would

The thing I worry about with religion isn't to do much with forgetting Christmas. It's to do with religion being angry and violent.

Richard Coles

Religion Christmas Worry

Trying to do Christianity properly is tough. Life as a priest is rigorous and disciplined. It involves sacrifices.

Richard Coles

Life Yin Us

In corporate life, I have noticed, it is getting harder and harder to say that things are bad.

Richard Coles

Life Tin Things

I was licensed and installed as 59th Vicar of St Mary the Virgin, Finedon, in Northamptonshire, in 2011.

Richard Coles

Car Vicar Tons

I will be doing a lot of human interest interviews. It involves empathising and listening. Which is a lot of what my day job is about. And, frankly, the priesthood isn't without its element of showbusiness.

Richard Coles

I remember in one parish a terrible row over the ideal size of mince pies, and in another two great ladies dashing trays of pancakes to the vicarage floor in a controversy over whether to roll or to fold. But the real arena for food combat is television.

Richard Coles

I started playing the piano aged four in an effort to copy Grandpa, who was constantly showing off and entertaining us all, singing comic songs on his baby grand.

Richard Coles

I am not in favour of hierarchies that grant privileges to members who fail to uphold those values - there are plenty of those - but the monarchy is really the Queen, who is of unimpeachable integrity and the longest serving head of state in the world, and who never puts a foot wrong.

Richard Coles

God chooses to arrive among the poor and the insignificant and the politically awkward, so what are we missing when we overlook them?

Richard Coles

One of the pleasures of living in London is the opportunity to do things that are only possible in a city of its size.

Richard Coles

The thought of having sclerosis of the synapses is alarming. I wonder if in later life I will pay the price for having overstimulated my mental apparatus in my twenties.

Richard Coles

I'm not the first Christian to have a fruity past. I hesitate to compare myself to St Augustine or St Paul, but there is a precedent for this sort of thing.

Richard Coles

I frequently find myself praying for punk, for something to come along and upset everybody and ignite a few fires and behave disreputably.

Richard Coles

This unthinking assumption of moral virtue on the Left is frustrating. I saw someone on Facebook talking about capitalist scum, he was angry and thought it was OK because his anger was righteous.

Richard Coles

Food as sport is nothing new. To a vicar, especially, church catering has represented the conduct of war by other means for many years.

Richard Coles

The dog collar is fascinating to people, when it doesn't repel. I've got used to being shouted at in the street.

Richard Coles

There's more of me on Twitter than there is in real life.

Richard Coles

I was the middle child of three boys and grew up in the village of Barton Seagrave near Kettering, Northamptonshire. My father, Nigel, followed his father, Keith, into shoe manufacturing.

Richard Coles

I got lucky with my parents. They were unfailingly loving and supportive, which gave me confidence about my place in the world.

Richard Coles

You find you have a lot of friends when you are rich and idle.

Richard Coles

I suppose I've always had a very genuine curiosity about religion. I loved the atmosphere of churches, the ethos; I adored Evensong.

Richard Coles

I love talking about myself.

Richard Coles

In the church I am very accountable, to the parish and the deanery; in the media thing I am not really accountable, I am out there on my own as a sort of busy, recognised religious person.

Richard Coles

I spend much of my time in a broadly liberal secular world but I don't belong to it, I belong somewhere else.

Richard Coles

I think that Christians should have confidence, we have always been part of the mainstream conversation, and if we don't join in often what you hear gets hectoring and mad, just people on the margins.

Richard Coles

I don't have any ambitions. I am looking forward to retiring, or at least having more time. When I was young I wanted more stuff, now I am older, I want more time.

Richard Coles

I wanted to put together a Christmas album that went back to the stable in Bethlehem and the source of it all. It kind of gets lost sometimes.

Richard Coles

What I wear identifies me as a priest. I don't agree with all this trying to appear 'normal'. If you want that to be normal, don't take off your dog collar and then put it on again, because what you're doing is playing along with the view that wearing one makes you odd.

Richard Coles

I am loathe to say I have a strategy in the broadcasting work I do, but I do think it is possible to be a priest who has something to contribute to mainstream media as long as you aren't completely mad.

Richard Coles

I just looked preposterous. It would be 'King Lear' and I'd walk on with Cordelia's dead body in my arms and the audience would hoot with laughter. The only time they didn't laugh was when I was doing comedy.

Richard Coles

A certain check to the sentimentality and commercialism of Christmas is the cluster of bereavements that often arrives towards the end of the year.

Richard Coles

My means of entry to 'Christianity was singing in a choir. As a boy chorister, I grew up with Ancient and Modern, the evening canticles, versicles and responses, and carols.

Richard Coles