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MELBOURNE - Controversial broadcaster Derryn Hinch has revealed he is suffering advanced cirrhosis of the liver brought on by chronic alcohol abuse.
Hinch, 63, a former New Zealand journalist, revealed his illness on the Nine Network last night after keeping it under wraps from his audience and his employers, Southern Cross Broadcasting, for most of last year.
The cirrhosis was complicated by a growth on his liver that might be cancerous, Hinch said.
He will undergo surgery at Melbourne's Cabrini Hospital in the next two weeks to remove the tumour, an operation the maverick broadcaster said could kill him.
Asked if the story, on the 60 Minutes programme, would be his obituary, Hinch quipped: "Depends when it goes to air.
"Well, if it is, I've already worked out what my tombstone's going to be. I don't want 'That's Life', on it. The two words I would like on it, I guess, 'He tried'. That would do me."
Hinch's specialist, Dr Howard Tang, said an MRI showed the tumour had not grown much, suggesting it might be benign, but was behaving like a cancer.
Hinch said he would commit suicide if it was revealed his damaged liver was also cancerous.
"If this got really bad, and it reached the stage that I am going to be in massive pain and whatever, while I still had faculties around me, I guess I would ... top myself - and I would have a glass of wine then."
Consuming alcohol would now be like "picking up a bottle of rat poison or methylated spirits", he said.
"Think about the expression 'so-and-so drank himself to death'. You do, and you can."
Staying silent about the nature of his illness despite taking many weeks off work had given rise to rumours that Hinch was suffering HIV, Alzheimer's disease, pancreatitis or any number of other complaints.
He mocked his own appearance in photographs published last year in a magazine article about him.
"I looked like Rock Hudson about three days before he died," he said.
Hinch's critics, including fellow 3AW broadcaster Neil Mitchell, have accused him of hypocrisy for keeping his illness secret while revealing the personal details of others.
Hinch was strongly rebuked by many of his 3AW colleagues when, following the death of cricketer and radio announcer David Hookes in a fight outside a St Kilda hotel in 2004, he revealed Hookes had separated from his wife, Robyn, and was with another woman at the time of his death.
At the time, Hinch was unrepentant.
"The problem here is that my radio station decided to play games and pretend that David Hookes was Mother Teresa and he wasn't," Hinch said at the time.
"It was a lie perpetuated for a week and that's not the business I'm in."
In May 2005, following the death of TV personality Graham Kennedy in a NSW nursing home, Hinch claimed Kennedy had died of complications resulting from HIV. The claim was strongly denied by Kennedy's friends, who revealed he had been tested for HIV and was found negative when a nurse caring for him suffered a needle stick injury a week before his death.
Then, in September last year, he caused further turmoil when, shortly after the death of motor racing legend Peter Brock in a rally crash in WA, Hinch claimed that Brock had beaten at least one of his former wives.
- AAP
