ITV political editor Robert Peston has described how he found it “too difficult” to return to a home in Wales he shared with his late wife.
Writer Sian Busby died of lung cancer in September 2012, aged 51.
Peston said Busby decided in the last 10 years of her life that Wales was her “proper home”, leading the couple to spend time at a house in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, for “many years”.
After her death, Peston kept the property for “a while” before deciding to sell because he said being there reinforced the “terrible sadness and grief” he felt.
“Being in a place where someone is both there but not there… ultimately I just found it too difficult so in the end I did sell it,” he said.
“But I still love Wales and Aberystwyth.”
Speaking to Lucy Owen on BBC Radio Wales, Peston said his wife “loved everything Welsh”, including the coastline, and the couple enjoyed taking “endless walks along the cliffs” together.
“There is so many amazingly beautiful villages and seaside towns in that part of the world,” he added.
He recalled how at age nine, his musician son Max recruited a bunch of “Aberystwyth lads” to start a rock band with him.
As an adult he went on to form another band, The New Sticky, alongside one of the original members from his childhood group, which his dad said was “lovely”.
Peston is no stranger to music himself, as lead vocalist of a rock and punk cover band, Centrist Dad.
He performs alongside broadcaster and former politician, Ed Balls, who plays the drums.
“We didn’t have a drummer and I piped up…’ well, I know a drummer’,” he said.
Peston had remembered visiting Balls in the 1990s in Yorkshire and seeing a drum kit, leading him to assume he could play.
Peston called Balls who said “he would give it a go”, before admitting “sheepishly” that he was not a drummer.
“The thing about Ed is everything he does, he does immensely seriously and so he is now a very accomplished drummer,” Peston added.
He said the band has provided him with the “most wonderful escapism”, adding: “It’s the joy of my life.”