I'VE SPENT SOME TIME AROUND DIVAS...

Celebrity vicar, writer and broadcaster Rev Richard Coles discusses drama queens, filming and murder with HANNAH STEPHENSON

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SHOWBIZ divas are nothing new to writer, broadcaster and retired vicar The Rev Richard Coles, whose first Canon Clement book Murder Before Evensong is currently being adapted for TV.

"I have spent some time around divas. I've always been rather fascinated by them.

"It's interesting, because a diva is a rather disparaging term for someone who's extremely difficult, capricious - and they can be all those things.

"But often they are operating in a very competitive world and they are doing their thing - and that sometimes means you take no prisoners. I rather like divas and I have some divas in my life and enjoy their company."

Rev Coles, 63, whose latest tour Borderline National Trinket is a title which arguably sums him up, says he loves fame and indeed has fuelled it with his fair share of reality TV gigs, including Strictly Come Dancing and I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! (he came third in 2024), and his appearances on numerous panel shows, his bestselling novels and several podcasts.

Now in an enclave of cosy crime writers he has known Richard Osman, author of The Thursday Murder Club, for some years who gather at crime festivals, he says that far from being competitive, it's a very supportive, friendly world.

"When Murder Before Evensong went to number one, Richard sent me a little note saying, 'Do you remember when years ago, we used to talk about murder mysteries? And here we are.' That was very generous of him."

Rev Coles has taken to asking everyone he meets about how they would murder someone in their profession, he continues.

Set in 1990, it sees Clement and his sidekick Det Sgt Neil Vanhoo - for whom his interest is both professional and personal - investigating the stabbing of a local woman, an extra on the set of a Hollywood movie being shot at the fictional Champton House in the eponymous rural village.