AA Gill and his wife Nicola Formby pictured in February 2015 in London. Photo / Getty
The author and newspaper columnist AA Gill has died at the age of 62, following a brief battle with cancer.
In a restaurant review, published in the Sunday Times on November 20, the father of four wrote: "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."
Sunday Times editor Martin Ivens described Gill as "the heart and soul of the paper" and "a giant among journalists".
"It is with profound sadness that I must tell you that our much-loved colleague Adrian Gill died this morning," Ivens said. "Adrian was stoical about his illness, but the suddenness of his death has shocked us all.
"Characteristically he has had the last word, writing an outstanding article about coming to terms with his cancer in tomorrow's Sunday Times Magazine.
"He was the heart and soul of the paper. His wit was incomparable, his writing was dazzling and fearless, his intelligence was matched by compassion. Adrian was a giant among journalists. He was also our friend. We will miss him. I know you will want to join me in sending condolences to [partner] Nicola Formby and his children."
Gill, who revealed that the news of his cancer prompted a successful proposal to Formby, said in a recent interview that he didn't "feel he'd been cheated of anything".
"I realise I don't have a bucket list; I don't feel I've been cheated of anything," he said. "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 [alcohol] addiction - I know I have been very lucky."
Gill, a dyslexic who dictated his copy, joined the Sunday Times in 1993, after a brief spell writing "art reviews for little magazines". According to Sunday Times writer Lynn Barber, "he quickly established himself as their shiniest star".
Before he began writing for the Sunday Times, Gill had studied art at the Central Saint Martins College of Art of Design and the Slade School of Fine Art.
He was also an alcoholic who, at the age of 30, was told by doctors he would be dead by Christmas if he didn't stop drinking. He never drank again. Gill wrote about his addiction in a memoir, Pour Me: A Life, published last year.
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