Annabel Croft confesses she still sleeps with her late husband’s scarf as she speaks candidly about her grief 18 months after his passing

Annabel Croft has revealed she sleeps with her late husband’s scarf every night and still dresses to impress him.

The former tennis player, 58, who lost her partner Mel Coleman to cancer in May 2023, said she regrets not paying him enough compliments when he was alive as he was always so admiring of her.

Speaking on the Style DNA podcast, the Wimbledon presenter confessed: ‘I sleep with his scarf. I have his scarf that he was wearing for all the treatments and everything, and it sort of smells of him.

‘So I go to bed and sleep with his scarf by my pillow.’

She joked that she ‘didn’t really like’ the scarf, adding: ‘It’s an awful scarf. But he absolutely loved it so I sleep with it in my bed.’

The former tennis player, 58, who lost her partner Mel Coleman to cancer in May 2023, said she regrets not paying him enough compliments when he was alive (pictured in 2021) 

Annabel also confessed she will often consciously wear clothes that she knows he loved as Mel was ‘always incredibly complimentary’ about what she wore.

‘He always made me feel like the most important woman in the world,’ she continued.

‘He did make me feel like that. And, you know, I loved wearing clothes for him, actually, because he absolutely loved everything that I wore, always paid me compliments.

‘And I shall regret that I didn’t pay him enough compliments. I always said he was getting more handsome and ageing way better than me, and he was getting more handsome every day.

‘He was somebody who aged well and became more handsome as he got older.’

Annabel said he ‘really did love my fashion’, as she added: ‘I am conscious that I do wear things that I know that he would have loved.

‘So yeah, I’ll continue to do that.’

The star confessed she recently wore a dress that she had bought days before he died.

The Wimbledon presenter confessed: ‘I sleep with his scarf. I have his scarf that he was wearing for all the treatments and everything, and it sort of smells of him’ (pictured 2013) 

The pair married in 1993 and share three adult children, Charlie, Amber and Lilly (pictured in 1988) 

Annabel took part in last years Strictly with her partner Johannes Radebe and documented how it helped her through her grief 

‘I brought it back to the house and put it on to show him and I had visualised I would wear that dress with him.

‘And I’d always visualised, “oh, this is what I’m going to wear when we’re on holiday together.” And he really loved it.’

Remembering the dress recently she explained: ‘Of course, I didn’t wear it until just recently and then it dawned on me that, “oh my god, that was the dress that I bought just before he died”.’

Mel passed away from colon cancer in May last year. He died just eight weeks after he was diagnosed with the terminal illness.

The pair married in 1993 and share three adult children, Charlie, Amber and Lilly.