Richard Coles

“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.”

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

“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'.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

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