The Reverend Richard Coles has spoken of his “shame” for pretending he had HIV during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.
The media personality and former vicar, who competed in the 2017 series of Strictly come danceHe admitted that it was “the worst thing I have ever done in my life” during an interview with The times.
“Pretending I had HIV was the worst thing I've ever done in my life,” he said. “It was in the middle of the AIDS crisis. I went a little crazy. “A lot of people did.”
While he “corrected the record as soon as he could and sought forgiveness from the people he had said that to”, Coles now looks back on his actions “with shame”.
The gay host also revealed that he thinks about those who did not survive the AIDS crisis “every day. What they would have done, who they would have become. Those of us who survived speak of it with great sadness.”
He called it “incredibly hard” and the “defining experience” of his adult life. “We were a very close-knit group and looked after each other as best we could, but it was a terrible blow for many of us,” Coles added.
The BBC Radio 4 Saturday Live presenter first publicly admitted to lying about testing positive for HIV in his 2014 memoir, Unfathomable richesin which he also spoke about his life of sex- and drug-fueled hedonism while a member of pop duo The Communards before converting to Christianity.
On the publication of the book, Coles said The Guardian who thought he had lied to “get attention.”
“The other thing, which is really hard to admit, was that I was drawn to it, because it had a strange kind of glamour,” he said. “Imagining that there is a strange glamor to something that was horribly killing people I cared about a lot. It gives an idea of my superficiality.”
Coles' closest friend Matthew was “very angry” and did not speak to him for a year at the time.
She also spoke about her struggle with depression and her grief after her husband, David Oldham, died in 2019 from alcoholism, Coles said. The times: “I went a little crazy. It took me a while to realize that I really wasn't coping. I see a grief therapist who says, “Everyone is angry for at least five years.” Maybe I'm reaching the end of madness.
