Russell T Davies, 63, addresses 'ridiculous' age gap with his waiter boyfriend, 27, and says he's 'completely respectful' as he reflects on the death of his husband

Russell T Davies has addressed his 'ridiculous' age gap with his boyfriend Oliver Cole, after finding love with the waiter eight years after his husband's death.

The former Doctor Who showrunner, 63, tragically lost his husband Andrew Smith to a brain tumour in 2018, and last year he shared that he had begun dating Oliver in a loved-up Christmas Day post.

Russell has now shared that despite Oliver's age, he feels 'grown up' and has already lived a 'hell of a life'.

The writer added that Oliver is 'completely respectful' of his partner's late husband, and they even watch shows together that Andrew enjoyed.

Speaking about his boyfriend, Russell said: '[He's] a lot younger, he's 27, which is ridiculous, I know. But he's Australian. They're very grown up aren't they, Australians?

'They know what's what, he might as well be 40. It's like, he's kind of had a hell of a life actually. He's seen a lot and done a lot and kind of fought his way to get to Britain. He's wonderful, and it's a great lease of life in my life. He's just gorgeous.'

Speaking on the How To Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast, Russell reflected on how he coped with his grief when his late husband Andrew passed away, and how Oliver has 'respected' his attempts to honour his spouse's memory.

He said: 'My lovely boyfriend Oliver is completely respectful, and when I make him sit and watch The Chase, I'm like, ''Andrew loved this. Watch this.'' Like that all the time, non-stop'.

The screenwriter was with Andrew for two decades, and the pair entered a civil partnership in December 2012, walking down the aisle to Mr Blue Sky by Electric Light Orchestra. 

Customs officer Andrew was diagnosed with a brain tumour in 2011 and given just a 3 per cent chance of recovery. He died in September 2018, aged 54.

Reflecting on his grief, Russell added: 'You just do, don't you? What you realise is everyone does. Find me someone without grief... they're gonna be quite young. A friend of mine recently said, ''Oh, I've been to my first funeral'.' He was 40. 

'I was like, ''Where have you been? What's happened to you? What little gilded cage have you been living in?'' It's extraordinary, isn't it? 40.

'I always kind of say to myself that the day after Hiroshima, everyone went to work. It's like the worst thing in the world happened and everyone got up the next day and went to work, 'cause you've got to. And you do. You say, 'I have no magic solutions to this.'

'I wish I could sit here and say, ''Ah, do this and think of that'.' But there isn't a magic solution to grief, other than the fact that you need to earn a wage and you need to have your tea. 

'I remember when Andrew died, one of his friends said to me, ''Don't forget to eat'.' I was like, ''Not a problem'.' I'm not gonna forget to eat. Bless him. He was being very kind.

'Maybe it helped that he was ill for eight years, so I knew it was on its way. But I don't think that's true, 'cause it's still a surprise when it happens. Even in the end, he spent that final September going down and down and down.

'You still wake up some September the 30th, and he's dead. That's shocking. You're not ready for that, no matter what. But I'm lucky I've got lovely family and lovely friends. 

'I always think, as I say in the book, I go on a ridiculous amount about how we could afford to be ill. I get paid very nicely in my job. 

'Not only that, but I save. I've saved and saved and saved for years, for decades. I always save for a rainy day, and then one day it rained.

'When we went to the Christie Hospital in Manchester for his treatment, which is one of Europe's biggest and best cancer hospitals, you'd sit at the Christie next to people who traveled miles to get there, who'd come to Manchester and stayed overnight.

'It was like a five-minute drive from our house. We were so lucky to have that place.

'But you realise the busiest door in that entire hospital is the door where they sort out people's benefits, because people have been told, ''You can't go back to work. You've gotta have six months off work. You'll have a year off work. You're never going back to work.''

'How are they gonna live? We never had that problem, 'cause I'd saved and saved and saved, and he could've stayed ill for 10 years, and we'd have been all right.

'There's a comfort to that. Everything you're talking about now, being ready to lose him, we'd had the comfort and almost the elegance of being free to imagine that. And still, it hits you like a brick.

'But still, you carry on. 'Cause actually the truth is, what I just described in my job, all those voices in my head, they don't stop. My thinking didn't stop. A month after that, I delivered the last episode of Years and Years.

'Imagine the Years and Years production team, they must have been going ''God, what do we do? Should we get someone else to write it?'' I don't think they ever quite told me what a crisis they went through, 'cause they were waiting for the last episode.

'They were so lovely. They dedicated the entire show to him at the end on BBC One, which was a really lovely thing to do. But they must have been going, ''What the hell do we do now?'' Of course I delivered it, because actually once he's dead, I had nothing else to do.

Russell made his relationship with Australian model Oliver public on Christmas Day last year, sharing a cosy selfie from his kitchen captioned: 'Merry Christmas! From me & Oliver.'

For Oliver's 27th birthday last June, Russell brought him to the Doctor Who set and treated him to a spin in the iconic Tardis.

Oliver filmed a clip inside the time machine, captioning it on social media: '27 – Another Year Passes. But it's alright I have a TARDIS x.'

A close friend of the couple previously told The Daily Mail: 'Oliver has brought a great deal of joy into Russell's life and they make each other genuinely happy.

'Despite the age gap, they're very much on the same wavelength – this relationship feels like one for the long haul.'

Also on the podcast, Gaby recalled a night out with Russell when he was mobbed by adoring actors all desperate to work with him: 'We were standing there and I saw all these actors gravitating towards you and you were saying, just protect me, protect me. They were all coming up going, what's next? Russell, Russell, what's next?'

Russell laughed: 'My boyfriend is like, aren't they just nice and friendly? I'm like, yeah.'

Last week, he revealed that his grief over the death of his boyfriend had 'seeped' into the acclaimed Channel 4 drama It's A Sin, which chronicled the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

'I've written certain death scenes that literally have mimicked things that he's gone through,' he said, 'but on a deeper level, the loss and the anger and the medicine and the boringness of illness, you know, that all seeps into it somewhere.'

He has also spoken of the anger he felt after Andrew's death, adding: 'He was only 54 when he died, so that's monstrous, that's just ridiculous.'

Russell has often said that if he had a time machine, he would return to the night he and Andrew first met.

'If I had a Tardis, I would go to Canal Street in Manchester and be a bystander in Cruz 101 on April 12, 1998, as I was standing by the railing, and he was standing at another railing with his friend, and we caught eyes,' he once recalled.