BBC PRESENTER WIDOWER STEVE After Rachael died, my son said to me: ‘Daddy, don’t worry, it’s just us two now. It’ll be OK’

cancer and underwent chemotherapy and a mastectomy. Yet she charted her experiences in frank, funny and heartfelt broadcasts, which won huge acclaim for breaking taboos.

In an equally honest way Steve tells Lauren Mahon and Deborah James, Rachael’s friends and co-presenters, about the gruelling days leading up to her death at home in Cheshire on September 5.

He says: “Because we didn’t talk about it, I had absolutely no idea what physically was going to happen to Rachael over those four or five days where she was getting more and more sick.

“Luckily I was in touch with Dr Kathryn Mannix, who has been on the pod and written a great book about it.

“But even with that, just the whole physical process, because we are scared about talking about the whole thing, I didn’t have any idea what was going to happen. I didn’t feel like anyone really explained how hard and demanding that last four or five days were going to be.

“I might be wrong, but I just feel that if Rachael had known how hard it was going to be she might have wanted to go into a hospice or something.

“I just don’t know that either of us understood how tough those last days were going to be; how demanding on her it was, only having me looking after her, and how demanding it was on me.”

He goes on: “I found it quite hard in the day or two after she died to remember what she sounded like normally, and even what she looked like just sitting next to me on the sofa.

“It was probably three or four days, when the storm had subsided somewhat, that those memories started coming back and it was a bit of a crash.”

Asked how he is coping, Steve says: “I’m OK. Good days and bad days, as you can imagine. Plenty of challenges.

“You don’t really know how you’re going to be when something like this happens. I guess, because we had a big lead up to it, two years of her being ill, you do kind of think, ‘What’s it going to be like?’

“But then it’s really nothing like that at all, nothing like you imagine.

“Trying to be as positive as I can on the good days, then recognise the bad ones and have a little cry then.”

In her final months, Rachael had been writing a memoir called For Freddie, full of stories about her life, advice and describing her favourite things.

She wrapped birthday presents for him for every year until he turns 21, and left notes so he would know her handwriting.

Most touchingly of all, Rachael left her perfume bottles, so Freddie will remember how his mother smelled when she cuddled him. She said: “I hope the

BBC’S Rachael and, inset, during treatment