WRITER, reverend and broadcaster Richard Coles is polishing up his culinary skills at Ashburton Cookery School.

The former Communards pianist is no stranger to a kitchen having finished fifth in Celebrity Masterchef 10 years ago.

The 64-year-old author of the Canon Clement murder mysteries is on a week’s course at the award-winning cooker school.

On his social media, he says he has made, so far, peanut butter ice cream and brownies; poached a pear under a cartouche and has a ‘flair for butchery’.

He says he is joined on the course by a ‘farmer from Ashby de la Zouch, an airline pilot from Los Angeles and a retired academic from Bergen’.

Before heading to Ashburton, Revd Coles attended mass at Buckfast Abbey which he described as ‘glorious’.

He said: ‘They’ve a splendid new organ and a terrific choir, Westminster Cathedral standard, which is no small achievement in a tiny village in South Devon.

‘Afterwards I took coffee with my old pal the Abbot, whom I have known for 35 years.

‘We met through a waitress at the Café Pasta in Islington, which may seem distant from the deep green edge of Dartmoor but isn’t really.’

Revd Coles has a long broadcasting history including fronting Radio 4 show Saturday Live, I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, eight times on Have I Got News For You and in the 2017 series of Strictly Come Dancing.

His career started as half of the pop group The Communards which he formed with Jimmy Sommerville and their biggest hit was in 1986 with their version of Don’t Leave Me This Way.

Before retiring from the Church of England in 2022, he was vicar of Finedon in Northamptonshire.