Church News: You Sexy Dancer!

The Londoner, thumbing the Rev Richard Coles’s autobiography, found an intriguing passage about
his days with The Communards. “Wherever we went,” Coles writes, “Jimmy [Somerville] was fêted by the gay community... in venues like the Nightingale in Birmingham or Rockshots in Newcastle, friendly, with go-go dancers in cages, one of whom I discovered years later was the Rev Giles Fraser, Canon of St Paul’s.”

Surely not! Intrigued, we pinged the open-minded Fraser pinged an email asking if he was a dancer. “Yep, I think I spent more time in Rockshots than I did in lectures when I was at university in Newcastle,” he recalled. “Did I dance in a cage? I can’t remember but I certainly wore some strange kit: bleached blond flat-top and a M&S plastic bag one night, I seem to remember. They were great days.”

The Londoner is jealous. It’s been years since we danced in a cage.

Londoners' Diary, Evening Standard.

From last week, but only found by Fagburn during his recent sojourn to London. ^^^

And to think, some laugh at me for picking days-old newspapers off the floor and reading them!

And from a similarly yellowing Times' Diary...

Chris Bryant, the vicar turned MP, was talking to one of the TMS lackeys at the launch of Fathomless Riches, the memoir of the Rev Richard Coles, the pop star turned vicar, when out of nowhere during a chat about politics he named a famous gay actor and said: “I don’t think I’ve had sex with him.” My chap was nonplussed at the non sequitur but Bryant continued: “He says we’ve had sex in Clapham. I’m fairly certain I’ve never had sex south of the river.” Makes him sound like a carnal cabbie.

O-kay...

PS Other ex-members of The Communards are available.

Richard Coles: "The Atheist's Favourite Priest"

I was rather weirdly chaste and nervous, while Jimmy [Somerville] was anything but. Our relationship was not…" He frowns. "Do you know, I can't remember whether we ever had sex." If he was chaste, then presumably they didn't? He laughs. "Yes, well, but you know, the occasional slip…" Would Somerville remember whether they ever had sex? "No, certainly not. Anyway, whether we did or we didn't do was immaterial to our friendship. We were young gay men in the 1980s, a very political time, and we had a common purpose: to bring Margaret Thatcher down with pop music."

Rev Richard Coles is profiled in The Independent On Sunday - note the journalist's presumption that all gay men must be fucking.
Former Communard and wild child, current vicar and broadcaster, and - eek - "trembling on the brink of national treasuredom."
"I just hope I don't fuck it all up," he says, "I suppose I could do so at any moment, couldn't I? It could happen here, now, with you."