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Russell T Davies is enjoying a new romance with Oliver Cole, an aspiring model four decades his junior.
The Doctor Who creator, 62, took to Instagram over the festive period to share a selfie of him and Oliver, 27, as he penned: ‘Merry Christmas! From me & Oliver’.
However the TV producer actually hinted at his romance with the Australian waiter over a month ago after he let Oliver explore the TARDIS.
Taking to his own social media in November, Oliver was scene frolicking around the iconic set, sparking speculation among the show’s obsessive fans that he could be the next Time Lord.
Oliver captioned the video: ‘27- Another Year Passes. But it’s alright I have a TARDIS x’.
He then reassured fans: ‘Not the new Doctor Promise x’ while Russell also wished Oliver a happy birthday in the comments.
A close friend of the couple told The Daily Mail’s Richard Eden: ‘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.’
It’s Russell’s first serious relationship since the death of his husband, Andrew Smith, from a brain tumour in 2018.
The couple had been together for more than 20 years and Russell took two-and-a-half years away from work to care for Andrew, a customs officer, during his battle with the terminal illness.
‘I was surprised by how many people were surprised that I did that,’ he later reflected.
Russell has often said that, given a time machine, he would travel back to the night he met his late husband.
‘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 [Andrew] was standing at another railing with his friend, and we caught eyes,’ he said.
Andrew was diagnosed with a brain tumour back in 2011 when the couple were living in LA.
Given only a three per cent chance of recovery, the pair moved back to Manchester and Russell took two years off work.
Speaking in an interview with the Radio Times back in 2019, six months after his passing, Russell described caring for Andrew as the ‘the greatest work I’ll ever do on this Earth.’
He explained: ‘All the widows warned me that six months was hard, and it is hard. I expected to miss him but we knew he would die one day. We had 13 years before he was ill but it’s hard to remember that at the moment. I’m stuck in the last four weeks of him dying.
‘Little by little, I know it will pass. I knew I would miss loving him, but what I didn’t know I would miss is being loved. That’s quite hard. That’s hideous, actually. No one warns you about that. I didn’t expect that to vanish but it’s just gone.’
