ITV I'm A Celeb's Rev Richard Coles' heartbreaking 'wish' after husband's tragic death

Reverend Richard Coles, who is entering the I’m A Celeb jungle in tonight’s episode, suffered the tragic and devastating loss of his husband in 2019.

Coles’ late husband David, also a clergyman, was only 43 when he died of liver disease, caused by an alcohol addiction that had gripped him since his teenage years.

Although Richard has found love again with actor Dickie Cant, he confessed that he feels “disloyal” in living his life without David.

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Discussing his loss in 2022, Rev Coles said: “I was absolutely with David through thick and thin, and I was with him till the very end.

“If you really love someone, part of you is destroyed when they die. I don't want to pretend that's not the case. I sometimes feel the tension that I will leave him behind.

“And I would never have left him behind. I feel a tinge of disloyalty in living more life without him.”

He met his late husband after David approached Richard for advice on joining the clergy and although they soon developed romantic feelings for each other, they initially were not intimate with each other.

And Coles retired from the clergy in 2022 because he felt he could no longer condone the way the Church of England "doesn't treat people fairly" in respect to its position on homosexuality.

In his memoir, The Madness of Grief, Richard wrote about living with someone in the grips of alcohol addiction and the "paralysing" period of sadness that followed.

Speaking to The Guardian in 2021, Rev Coles heartbreakingly admitted that he “neglected important things”.

He said: “I realised, suddenly, that in trying to fill my life with as much incident and interest as I