Widower reunited with lost video of late wife

Bill Sheargold and Lesley had been together for 45 years

A widower left distraught after accidentally deleting a treasured video of his late wife has spoken of his relief on having the clip restored - thanks to the intervention of an IT charity.

Bill Sheargold, from Wolverhampton, spotted a notification on his mobile phone informing him to clear his email inbox, so he followed the on-screen instructions.

But this also purged a two-minute clip of his wife, Lesley, to whom he was married for 45 years until her death in May last year.

The 65-year-old was in distress over his actions, saying of the footage: “It’s so precious because I had lots of photos [of her] but hardly any videos."

While other people had favourite memes or saved social media videos, Mr Sheargold's digital go-to was the cherished footage.

The tearful widower told the BBC of the awful moment he learned something had gone terribly wrong.

"A couple of days [after deleting the emails], I went to play the video and it wasn’t there.

"This important video of my wife" featuring her "just talking for two and a half, three minutes" seemed gone forever, he explained.

After her death in May 2023, Mr Sheargold was left with photos of his wife Lesley but not many videos

Step forward the AbilityNet charity, an organisation that helps people having digital issues, with which he was put in touch after contacting BBC Radio WM about his plight.

The charity arranged for an engineer to pay Mr Sheargold a visit and go through his device in the hopes of retrieval.

Anxious hours followed, with the widower not knowing whether he would ever look on the video again.

Eventually, engineer Mohammed Iltaf informed Mr Sheargold there had been a breakthrough - and the one for which he was hoping.

The hours-long trawl through the device had recovered the content.

And while it only depicted his wife in everyday conversation, to Mr Sheargold the digital reunion meant everything.

The 65-year-old was over the moon when the charity restored the video

Chris Grant, from the charity, said: “It’s amazing what this means to him - we put an SOS appeal to all our volunteers across the UK for ideas to get the video back."

He added: “It was brilliant to get [the clip] back for him, I can’t praise Mohammed enough for making such a difference to his life.

“Bill is such a nice guy and we were delighted to help.”