Barbara Want: After my husband Nick Clarke died, I had no love for my boys

By Angela Levin Published: 8:00PM GMT 02 March 2010

Comments twenty-two |

Barbara Want, who lost her husband, BBC broadcaster Nick Clarke, to cancer Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY

Nick Clarke was the mellifluous-voiced presenter of BBC Radio 4"s flagship stream affairs programme The World At One. His kindly probing character and disarming courtesy, generally with politicians, done him one of the majority reputable and clever presenters in broadcasting. He was additionally one of the nicest.

When he was diagnosed with cancer in Nov 2005, and told his left leg had to be amputated to save his life, he motionless to keep an audio diary in that he movingly talked about his operation and chemotherapy. It was promote on Radio 4 the following Jun to majority acclaim. Sadly Nick died elderly 58, just a year after his diagnosis.

Walter Cronkite: The voice that spoke for America Agatha Christies Miss Marple behind on shade with Julia McKenzie Britains Got Talent. Or has it? Sian Busby: My father Robert Peston, the workaholic seer Other TV highlights: week end 18/19 Apr

Now his second wife, broadcaster Barbara Want and mom of their identical tiwn sons, Benedict and Joel who were 4 when their father died, has created a absolute and profoundly honest book called Why Not Me? that is both a in contact with love story and a tender roar of grief.

"Grief took me to a terrifying place located at the outdoor edges of human tolerance," she admits. "Whereas a little people can put it to one side in the hope, a vain one I think, that it goes away. Others, similar to me penetrate with it. I went right to the unequivocally bottom and lived in a array for dual years.

"I have additionally detected that in the destiny you sense how to soak up pique in to your life. It afterwards becomes an neglected travelling messenger that stalks you day and night, invisible to others, but regularly by your side and never less than hateful."

We encounter at their semi-detached residence in west London, filled with toys, books, paintings and Barbara"s assorted collections, majority of that she sources on eBay. We sat sipping fennel tea in her salmon-pink vital room, a colour that Nick chose and Barbara has not long ago had repainted, surrounded by large smiling family photographs.

Barbara, who is reed thin and blonde, is no quiescent widow. She is vicious in her defamation of those around her, from Nick"s former BBC colleagues to the mothers at the propagandize gate, whom she feels deserted her in her agony. "The approach people hoop pique is to fake it is not there," she says. "I was frightened about how couple of people were there for me. I did try to speak about Nick but majority people altered the theme immediately. I felt I had been sent to Coventry. Since my own loss I will never let someone else"s anguish go unspoken. It has done me majority some-more means to speak about anyone"s worry or illness."

Barbara initial got to know Nick in May 1987. She was 26, ambitious, singular and an partner writer on BBC2"s stream affairs programme Newsnight. Nick was twelve years comparison and a domestic match on the programme. He was tied together with 3 children, twins Ali and Tom, and an additional son Pete. He and Barbara began operative together and shortly fell in love. "I felt as if I had waited all my hold up to encounter him," she says.

Nick"s divorce from his mom Sue came by in 1991 and they tied together a couple of weeks after on a wind-swept beach in Mauritius. "We laughed at each other, with each alternative and in annoy of each other," she says. Barbara went on to be a writer on Panorama, whilst Nick, a man who "lived and breathed the news" altered from air wave to radio. As well as presenting The World at One, he chaired the Round Britain ask and penned multiform books, together with a autobiography of the mythological broadcaster Alistair Cooke. After years of struggling to have children, their twins were innate on Jul 5, 2002. Barbara stepped afar from the BBC to outlay some-more time with her babies and co-wrote a book called Baby Secrets.

Nick and Barbara have been long-time friends of cave and I obviously recollect when Nick began angry about an "embarrassing" suffering around his buttocks. None of us knew it was the begin of his vicious illness. Sadly he abandoned it for months until strenuous annoy eventually propelled him to find healing help. He was diagnosed with sarcoma, a cancer of the junction tissues. It was a singular but assertive cancer that Nick declared The Beast. His amputation that went right up to the waist was successful in that for a couple of months he was "technically" free of cancer. Despite or since of her love for Nick, Barbara admits how formidable she found the purpose of carer. "For me, the disappointment of being the unsung hero, total with the ire I felt at myself for adventurous to wish a bit of confirmation or praise, had my mind in shreds," she says. She additionally admits she felt an "utterly undue anger" at Nick for carrying depressed ill.

Sadly the cancer returned and Barbara"s feelings dramatically changed. "I felt myself begin on a new journey," she recalls. "Alongside Nick and close to him, I could feel it receiving me towards a point of umbrella love. It is similar to apropos the alternative person, where you are so joined, conjoined that you unequivocally are one." Nick longed for to die at home and did so in Barbara"s arms. Just prior to the impulse came she whispered: "It"s OK my darling. You can go."

His wake was attended by hundreds, together with a host of heading politicians from all 3 main parties. Barbara, however, was some-more endangered about how to insist the participation of a coffin in the church when she had told the twins on the day Nick died that he had left to Heaven. "I came up with the thought that it would be filled with a little of the things he"d need in Heaven and asked them for suggestions. Benedict pronounced he"d need lasagne and chopped tomatoes ketchup, whilst Joel thought he"d additionally wish mayonnaise."

Her own feelings were of complete wretchedness. "With Nick"s depart I had lost companionship, association and intimacy," she says. "I"d lost a co-parent, the sharer of my days. I"d lost the hold up we had lived, the interpreter of all that happened to me, the reason I longed for to live, the hold up I approaching to live. My destiny had disappeared. Where once there had been hopes and dreams, right afar all I was, was a vacant canvas. Loss altered the approach I associated to all and everybody."

This enclosed her attribute with Benedict and Joel. "After Nick died, I felt I had no love for the boys," she admits with heartless honesty. "As a mom I was frightened that I looked at them and felt nothing. To my contrition I even strike them in anger. I assimilate right afar that pique takes afar all and you can feel zero but a brew of annoy and denial. Fortunately all that has right afar upheld and we are unequivocally close. The young kids are still estimate the death. Joel had distressing clinginess and stays unequivocally irritable if he doesn"t see me or know what I am doing. Benedict went in to himself at the time but right afar has big annoy issues. He is saying what happened in a new light and with a some-more grown brain. It is tough to understanding with as I am perplexing to be both parents. On the one palm I try to levy consanguine management and on the alternative be maternally sensitive and contend "I love you"."

She has turn so wakeful of the miss of assistance for small young kids who lose a desired one that, underneath the auspices of Cruse Bereavement Care, she and a anguish councillor go to youth schools and speak to teachers and await staff about traffic with bereaved children.

Shortly after Nick"s death, Barbara, who right afar has a media precision association and is the anguish aunt on BBC Radio 2"s Jeremy Vine show, had an event and was roundly criticised by a little friends. "I felt so waste and indispensable to be overwhelmed and held," she says defiantly. "There is a banned about widows carrying sex. As a widow you are approaching to go afar and honour the mental recall of your husband, but I think I did. Nick taught me how to be in a great attribute and it was so great that I wish to try to find it again. People who are divorced mostly bashful afar from relations since they have had a bad experience and are scarred. I don"t have scars. My attribute with Nick was full of love." Her eyes fill with tears. "I still think about him a lot and with augmenting clarity. I miss him so majority and still can"t hold I am never going to see him again. He was my essence partner and I have so majority to discuss it him.

"I know I will never find someone similar to him again, but I could have a opposite sort of relationship. It would be good to find someone who was all committed who I can grow old with and who won"t die on me."

Why Not Me? By Barbara Want (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, rrp �16.99) is accessible fromBooks at �14.99 + �1.25 p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or revisit books.telegraph.co.uk