Sunday Times food critic AA Gill has revealed in his latest column that he has been diagnosed with cancer.
Gill, 62, told readers of his Table Talk restaurant review: “I’ve got an embarrassment of cancer, the full English.
“There is barely a morsel of offal not included. I have a trucker’s gut-buster, gimpy, malevolent, meaty malignancy.”
The columnist consulted doctors after people noticed he had lost weight. They told him he had lung cancer which had spread to other parts of his body.
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Following his diagnosis Gill has proposed to his partner of 23 years Nicola Formby, with whom he has twins, both nine. He also has two grown-up children from his marriage to Home Secretary Amber Rudd.
Gill battled alcoholism in his earlier life and began a writing career in his thirties. He joined the Sunday Times in 1993.
Speaking to the paper about his diagnosis he said: “I realise I don’t have a bucket list; I don’t feel I’ve been cheated of anything,” he said.
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“I’d like to have gone to Timbuktu, and there are places I will be sorry not to see again.
“But actually, because of the nature of my life and the nature of what happened to me in my early life – my addiction, I know I have been very lucky.
“I gave up [alcohol] when I was still quite young, so it was like being offered the next life. It was the real Willy Wonka golden ticket, I got a really good deal.
“And at the last minute I found something I could do. Somebody said: why don’t you watch television, eat good food and travel and then write about it? And, as lives go, that’s pretty good.”
He added: “There is obviously no silver lining to cancer, but one of the things I found most touching and compelling is that you give people a chance to be incredibly kind.”
Gill has said he would have chemotherapy on the NHS rather than using a private hospital because of the “connection it brings”.
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