Writer AA Gill has revealed he has been diagnosed with the “full English” of cancers.
He said his illness — diagnosed recently after family concerns about his rapid weight loss — prompted his successful proposal to Nicola Formby, his partner of nearly a quarter of a century.
The father-of-four, married to Home Secretary Amber Rudd during the 1990s, said the disease had spread to several parts of his body, restricting his ability to exercise and travel during treatment.
Writing in the Sunday Times, the 62-year-old columnist said: "I've got an embarrassment of cancer, the full English.
“There is barely a morsel of offal that is not included.
“I have a trucker’s gut-buster, gimpy, malevolent, meaty malignancy.”
In an interview with the newspaper, he said he had no regrets about the diagnosis.
He said: “I realise I don’t have a bucket list; I don’t feel I’ve been cheated of anything.
“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.”
PA