The award-winning journalist and restaurant critic AA Gill has died aged 62, three weeks after revealing he had cancer
Senior staff at the writer’s newspaper, the Sunday Times, confirmed Gill’s death on Twitter on Saturday afternoon. Tim Shipman, political editor of the Sunday Times, wrote: “AA Gill, the writer who first made me buy the Sunday Times, the best of us for thirty years has died. Very sombre mood in the office.
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The Edinburgh-born writer previously 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.
AA Gill, the writer who first made me buy the Sunday Times, the best of us for thirty years has died. Very sombre mood in the office.
— Tim Shipman (@ShippersUnbound) December 10, 2016
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.
Announcing his illness in the Sunday Times the columnist wrote: "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.
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"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."
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