Peter Sinclair dies in Auckland

Longtime media icon Peter Sinclair has died this morning from leukaemia.

Sinclair, 63, died peacefully in Auckland's St Joseph's Mercy Hospice where he had been for the final months of his life.

Born in Sydney on November 15, 1937, Sinclair moved to New Zealand with his family when he was two-years-old.

With a career in broadcasting spanning 42 years, Sinclair began in radio before moving to television to host a series of New Zealand pop shows in the 1960s and early 1970s - Let's Go, Happen Inn and C'mon.

He later became the compere of quiz shows Mastermind and University Challenge, but was perhaps best remembered as the Auckland host of Telethon fund-raising events during the 1980s.

Sinclair remained in broadcasting after leaving television, continuing to work in Auckland radio, writing a novel 'The Frontman' and writing Herald internet columns: 'Web Walk' and 'Cybersleuth'.

In June, he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to broadcasting.

Today, Prime Minister Helen Clark paid tribute to Sinclair's contribution to New Zealand broadcasting.

"Peter will be sorely missed. (He) was the consummate professional, able to switch effortlessly between radio and television, between commercial and public service broadcasting.

"His hallmark was his grace, style and unflappable manner. This showed through not only in his broadcasting but also in the columns he wrote chronicling his illness over the past few months," Helen Clark said.

Sinclair revealed in his first 'On Life' column in March that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

"My doctor, who is also a friend, told me that what we'd feared for a while was true: my own corpuscles had turned on me like sharks.

"I was suffering from leukaemia; which, given my particular circumstances (too flimsy for intensive chemotherapy, and with no close relative from whom to borrow a cup of bonemarrow), was essentially untreatable," he wrote.

Sinclair said he did not wish to be a "poster-boy for leukaemia", but had written the series of columns "to look back, ahead, sideways to talk to myself, as it were, so that perhaps I'll be able to sum it all up and work out a map of the route which brought me here".

He wrote that after a long public life, he desired, as far as was possible, a private death.

"I hope to be able to exit without pain and with whatever shreds of grace can be salvaged from the situation."

But most of all he wrote what he called love-letters to life.

"Thanks, life, it's been a pleasure."