I did everything I could to keep Paul alive.. his dog Arfur nuzzled him as if to say ‘wake up’.. it was heartbreaking

Remembering much-loved TV star

and thought Paul must have gone to the cottage in the grounds of the house which they were renovating.

“I walked to the kitchen to start putting some food on, and I started taking things out of the fridge,” he says.

“And all of a sudden, I could see him lying on the floor.”

Andre remembers being frozen with shock.

“I just didn’t know what to think at first,” he recalls. “He had a cut on his forehead, and I thought he was probably just unconscious. I called the ambulance and they said the best chance to keep him alive was to do CPR.”

Andre tried desperately to save Paul’s life. “I don’t know how long it took for the ambulance to arrive but by the end I was exhausted,” he says.

When the crew arrived, they spent an hour trying to resuscitate him.

He adds: “At one point, they were like ‘yes, he’s breathing.’ I thought the nightmare was gone but it was very short-lived, and very shortly afterwards they pronounced him dead.” Listening to Andre speak, it’s unsurprising that the images still burn so strongly in his memory.

You can’t help but feel that his wish to talk about it is as important a part of his own personal healing process as the passage of time itself.

And there was one moment that evening which left a particularly poignant mark.

“The saddest part of this all is that when all of this happened, and as I was trying to resuscitate him, I was trying to keep the dogs out of the room,” he explains. “But somehow Paul’s dog Arfur, who is one of his favourites, escaped and he nuzzled his face as he always did on Paul’s shoulder, as if to say ‘wake up’.

“It was just heartbreaking.”

After such a traumatic experience, it’s little wonder the next days, weeks and months passed in a blur.

Andre says Paul’s birthday in June was a terrible time. He thought he was strong enough for Christmas and had invited all of Paul’s family, only to cancel and spend the day alone. “I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. I just sat with my feelings,” he says. But one of the things which got him through was the astonishing outpouring of love for his husband.

“I couldn’t leave the house for three weeks because people kept coming to leave flowers, cards, or even little miniature dogs.

“It just reinforced quite how popular and deeply loved he was.”