One of this planet's finest presenters has announced he's lost his ongoing battle with leukaemia.

Since being diagnosed less than three years ago, he admitted in a recent interview that he's "almost died four times… I am man who is approaching his terminus."

Speaking with the Daily Mirror the 72-year-old broadcaster/author/TV critic said: "I've been really ill for two-and-a-half years. I was diagnosed with leukaemia then I had COPD which is a fancy name for emphysema and my immune system packed up. And that's just the start. I almost died four times and I swore to myself if I can just get through this winter, I'd feel better. And I got through the winter and here it is a lovely sunny day and guess what, I don't feel better… I'm getting near the end… My tragedy now is that I'm so ill I can't get out so I’m a bit of a recluse. I keep thinking of things I might have done better and remember the good times of course. But mainly I remember the errors. It's my nature, it makes me almost ¬impossible to live and work with."

As if that wasn't enough, the likelihood of him ever getting to see his native Australia again is dwindling: "You couldn’t get enough oxygen aboard a plane to get me to Sydney. I used to be in Australia for five or six times a year but now I can't go. The wistfulness is really building up and I'm facing the possibility I might never see Sydney again. I've still got an Australian passport, that's ¬patriotism, loyalty, and that's also because I'm a masochist and I like being on the end of the longest queue for anything in Europe which is the security queue at Heathrow."

His admission regarding his health has obviously touched a lot of people, who are expressing their loss via the Twitter Mill. Here's just a few.

@MrChrisAddison: Clive James is the best kind of intellectual - one who doesn't let you know that's what he is. A genius and a one-off.

@AlexPetridis: Such sad news about the great Clive James. Anyone who writes popular criticism in a UK newspaper does it in his shadow.

@AndrewCollins: The great Clive James is terminally ill. This makes all other Tweets today seem insignificant… The approachable genius.

@Neilhimself Neil Gaiman: Google for Clive James' poem "The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered". It is the thing I most love him for.

@ CharltonBrooker: Only just read about Clive James being ill. He made me want to write for print and do TV about TV. Impossibly perceptive & hilarious writer… When I was writing TV columns, I went back and reread some of his old Observer columns and was profoundly shaken by my comparative shitness.

@CharlesLavery: As Clive James said: "Stop worrying, nobody gets out of this world alive." #clivetalking
 

'Meeting Myself Coming Back - Clive James' is on BBC Radio 4 (get busy with yer radio app), Saturday at 8pm.