Richard E Grant shares the last thing his wife taught him before she died

Richard E Grant has shared a moving account of the last thing his wife taught him before she died.

The British actor was being interviewed on Lorraine about his new memoir, Pocketful of Happiness, when he recalled the memory.

Grant’s wife Joan Washington was an acclaimed dialect coach, who died of lung cancer last September.

The couple had been together for 38 years, married for 35, and shared their daughter Olivia Grant together.

“The last thing she taught me was a working class Sheffield accent to play an old drag queen…” Grant told host Lorraine Kelly.

“She said ‘stop flirting with me’ when she was teaching me, and I said ‘well it worked the first time 38 years ago’,” he added.

He then went on to reflect on the grieving process: “It helps hugely [talking about it]... the weird thing that happens after somebody’s died, after a couple of months people don’t mention the person,” he said.

“But you want to talk about them, you don’t want them cancelled out,” he continued.

Back in April, Grant said living without his wife was like being “a turtle without his shell”.

Grant had posted a video to his social media which showed him walking on a beach on Australia’s Gold Coast.

“Beautiful as this beach is, I feel and look like an old turtle without my shell, trying to navigate the world on my own, having lost my loving ‘compass’ called Joan,” he wrote in the video’s caption.

“Trying my best,” he added.

Grant’s memoir was released in September as an honour to his wife’s wish for him to “find a pocketful of happiness in each day”.