ITV news star, 46, dies of cancer after long battle in hospice

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Image: Gary's Chemo Diary

ITV journalist Gary Burgess died on New Year’s Day after a long battle with terminal cancer. He was aged just 46. The ITV news star passed away peacefully at a hospice in Jersey on 1 January afters doctors had informed him there were inoperable tumours on his lungs. Burgess had previously told his fans he had six to twelve months to live in November 2020 and documented his cancer battle in his online blog.
Burgess was first diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1999. This was looked after but he was then treated for more tumours in 2015 and 2016, reports the Daily Mail. Burgess left a final message with ITV to be released after he died in which he praised his “soul mate”, husband Alan.
He said: “I’ve had the best life. I’ve had the luckiest life. I met my soul mate and the love of my life who went on to become my husband. I got to work with some of the most amazing people in newsrooms and studios doing the job I absolutely adore.
“And I’ve been able to share my own relatively short time on this planet surrounded by friends and loved ones who have enriched my life in ways they may never truly understand.
“My greatest sadness is the prospect of leaving all of that and all of them behind. The thought of doing that to Alan is unfathomable to process, but I also know the very people who’ve shown me love and support will now wrap up those feelings around him in the coming days. It’s time for me to hand over my microphone and keyboard for others to do the talking about me, so let my final words simply be ‘thank you’. Every person in my life has, in their own way, helped me live my best life. That’ll do.”
ITV news star Burgess presented news reports, wrote a column for the Jersey Evening Post and hosted the local radio station Channel 103.
He wrote on Twitter last year: ‘Hello friends. This is a difficult post. I’ve always tried to be an open book about my health. Today some news I never expected to be sharing.’
Following it up on his popular blog, he penned: “Hearing you’re going to die is odd.
“The nasties growing between my heart and lung that three months of ‘salvage chemotherapy’ had shrunk earlier this year have come back to life… They’re inoperable. There isn’t a treatment left to get rid of them. I’m apparently unusual (I knew that!), with my oncologist seeing only one such case of this rare cancer each year.
He said: “It immediately washed over me like the most overwhelming sea of guilt to think that my husband is likely going to be alone at home without me. Our holidays. Our watching telly on the sofa. Our weekend breakfasts.
“It just feels totally unfair. For him. For me. And I know that makes me sound selfish. I don’t mean it like that. Now my heart breaks at the prospect of the person I love more than any other in this world being cut adrift. It’s not fair on him. I feel like the worst husband ever, even though I know that’s just self-serving self-pitying silly talk.”


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Written by

Claire Gordon

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