The real last Tango in Halifax
In a week of bleak news, a heart-lifting interview with the woman whose late-life love inspired the enchanting TV show
reversal, I suppose. Not long after he moved in, we decided to get married. Alec started talking about where we would live “if we got married” and I said, “no, you’ve got to ask me properly”, so he did.’
The engagement led to a bit of a misunderstanding with the vicar at the local church in Oxfordshire, where they wanted to exchange their vows.
‘When I spoke to him he wasn’t very happy about the fact that we were already living together and had both been married before and said he didn’t feel he could marry us.’
But then the vicar was told the full story of this unusual love affair — and happily relented.
They were wed on June 4, 2005. Dorothy had turned 76 a few days earlier, Alec was 75. ‘It was just lovely,’ smiles Dorothy. ‘All the family came, all the children, and we had a cricket match in Sally’s garden. We called it the fun day. I can’t tell you how happy we both were.’ They moved to Bridlington the following year because in his youth Alec’s family had a caravan there and he had happy memories of the seaside town.
But the happiness was cut short suddenly one day in 2009. ‘Alec got up first and I went down about 15 minutes later. I noticed he hadn’t made any breakfast and he said he was popping into the garden to have a bit of a stroll around.
‘I went upstairs and when I came back down he was sitting in his chair. He’d taken his coat and glasses off and was just sitting there and I knew there was something wrong.
‘I knew it was bad and called the emergency services and they were here in no time at all.
‘They worked on him for half an hour while I watched. It was very traumatic — not like they do it on the television.
‘At the end of the half an hour one of the ambulance men turned to me and said, would you like to say goodbye to him?
‘So I knelt on the floor and kissed him and told him how much I loved him.
‘It was a terrible, terrible shock. I knew that Alec had heart problems, but he just took his pills — washed down with a glass of wine — and got on with life.
‘At the beginning I felt drained. It was very hard, and I’d relive that last day when he collapsed. But as time has gone on it’s got better. What can you do — you just have to get on with it, don’t you?
‘I missed him terribly and I still miss him today. The house seems so quiet. I can’t help reminiscing about all the lovely times we had, especially when I go to bed at night.’
When she has a glass of wine, Dorothy always raises a glass to the photograph of the two of them on their wedding day and says: ‘Cheers, Alec.’
When she goes to bed, she says good night to the photograph of him on his bedside table. She keeps his ashes in the bedroom.
‘Some people might find that odd, but to me it’s completely normal. When it’s my time, we’ll be buried next to each other — together again.
‘But you know I often feel him about the place, it’s quite uncanny, as though he’s still sitting over there in his chair. I find that hugely comforting.
‘Of course there are the what-ifs, and I really wish we’d got together at school because I believe we’d have got through the next 50 years very happily. But I’m truly grateful for the time we had.’
Every Sunday, Dorothy watches Last Tango In Halifax and she’ll be watching it tomorrow, as usual. She loves the show and is hugely proud of Sally.
But to keep things interesting Sally has invented a few plotlines of her own, one being that Alan fathered a child with another woman during his first marriage.
‘Well I can’t say I’m happy about that,’ says Dorothy. ‘Alec wasn’t that sort of man at all. I worry people will think he really did that. But I understand why Sally has to do it.
‘The thing about me and Alec is we were so happy, we never argued, we were always laughing. I know it sounds funny, the idea of someone falling in love and getting married in their 70s.
‘But if anyone else finds themselves in such a position, I have one thing to say to them — go for it!’
‘The house is so quiet — I miss him terribly’