Boris Johnson announced the disastrous Christmas 2020 lockdown, his wife had been diagnosed with terminal cancer - and she died just eight months later, leaving devoted Richard struggling to contain his grief.Richard, who besides being an accomplished actor is also the creator of Jack Perfume at Liberty London, posted an emotional video to his 284,300 followers early this morning to share his grief.A clearly crushed Richard couldn't bring himself to start speaking until seven seconds into the video and kept his head firmly bowed down throughout."One of those mornings when uninvited melancholics come up and squat on your brain," he said simply.He ended the short clip by revealing he would be going for a walk.Richard had been married to his beloved wife Joan Washington for 35 years when lung cancer took her from him, after first meeting her when he was sent for voice coaching lessons at The Actor's Centre in London back in the 1980s."She was wearing a boiler suit and had fairly short, cropped hair and Kicker shoes, and was chain-smoking, which I thought was insane," he recalled to the Independent of the first time he laid eyes on her."She was teaching an accent session with a bunch of actors, and I thought she had the most wonderful voice and huge, sort of monkey eyes."I thought that she was really cute and all that.
It was December 1982."She had been recruited to help him learn how to authentically replicate a Belfast accent for a film role and he had an instant crush on her - but sadly, she didn't immediately feel the same."I used to take a class of about 20 people and I actually used to find him quite annoying because he'd get the giggles at quite the wrong moment - and I was a strict teacher," she once recalled of her.
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