Cable reveals love, loss and romance in radio interview

Published on Saturday 17 January 2009 18:32

VINCE Cable yesterday spoke of his first wife's unsuccessful fight against cancer and described how he unexpectedly rediscovered happiness with a new romance in his late fifties.

The Liberal Democrat shadow chancellor opened up about his private life during a revealing interview on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs programme.

Cable, 65, talked of falling out with his late father as a result of his first marriage to Olympia Rebelo, a Kenyan Asian who died of cancer after more than 30 years of happy marriage. His father, a working-class Tory with archaic views on race, disapproved of the match and the pair fell out.

His personal life came under discussion when presenter Kirsty Young noticed that Cable continues to wear the wedding ring from his first marriage alongside the band from his second.

"I've been lucky to have had two very happy marriages and I like to celebrate both of them," he explained.

He met Rachel, to whom he is now married, when she heckled him at a party event about free trade and farming, before "inviting me back to see her cows", he said. "When I met Rachel and we became close, I rediscovered, in my late fifties, love and romance – the things you thought you would never find again."