Amy Hoggart writes on her newspaper columnist father

Simon Hoggart's daughter wrote a piece in yesterday's Guardian about her Dad. A lovely read - if that could dare be the right thing to say. Still.

Amy Hoggart
My father, Simon Hoggart, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in June 2010. By this point it had spread to his spleen and metastasised in his lungs, and so was pronounced terminal.

This form of the disease is particularly aggressive and the usual life expectancy of a pancreatic cancer patient at the point of diagnosis is five to seven months.

Thanks to cutting-edge treatment at the Royal Marsden hospital, in London, Dad managed to fight on for another three and a half years.

He proudly considered himself the poster boy of pancreatic cancer treatment, and was delighted every time his doctors showed off his stats at medical conferences round the world. Things took a sudden turn for the worse just before Christmas, however, and he died on Sunday.

Dad's cancer experience included periods of relatively good health as well as bouts of hospitalisation as he coursed his way through a variety of different chemotherapy treatments. The thing with cancer is that it's usually the chemo rather than the disease itself that makes the patient feel so ill, particularly at the start. "Woozy" was Dad's term for it. It's hard to know what this actually meant and I think he kept it deliberately vague so we never fully understood how bad it felt.

His bravery and stoicism were astonishing. Yet in some ways he was quite lucky: compared with other chemotherapy patients, his responses were rarely serious enough to change his normal day-to-day life. He kept on working, travelling, socialising, and laughing right up to his final entry into hospital last month.

Finishing work was just never an option for him and his last Guardian article was published on 19 December, composed from the hospital bed. Like his own father, Richard Hoggart, who wrote his last book on the brink of his descent into senile dementia, Dad was adamant about continuing to write.

Even during the later periods of treatment – with the chemo pounding through his body making him tired, woozy and low – he'd still wrap up and take the train into Westminster to see how he could depict politicians looking statesmanlike or even ridiculous that day.

Actually, I'm sure his energy and passion for work had something to do with how he survived so long. He never lost his appetite for each new busy day.


Simon Hoggart at work in 2004. Photograph: David Sandison/The Independent/Rex
Another huge source of pleasure in Dad's life was travelling round the country with my mother to speak at various literary festivals. These were always lovely gigs, composed almost entirely of his own readers who he always enjoyed meeting. Even if he'd spend the remainder of the weekend resting, he would always somehow muster the energy to perform.

At Cheltenham, last October, he did two talks, and I was astonished by his bravery and spark. I suppose people in the audience probably guessed something was wrong – by this point he barely resembled the portly figure smiling knowingly in his tilted Guardian pic – but you wouldn't have been able to guess from his performance.

The decision not to come out publicly about his illness wasn't an easy one. Dad's always enjoyed what he felt was a very close, reciprocal relationship with his readers. In particular his weekly diary was always such a personal space through which he felt he and his readers really got to know each other.

A big concern of his was that they would think him dishonest when they discovered he'd kept this huge fact from them. For nearly four years he would finish his four-a-week political sketches, his Spectator columns and his Saturday diary early, before heading to the hospital first thing on Friday for a full day's chemo that he never mentioned in print.

There are many reasons for this. I think it's fair to say the first was pride. In his exact words: "I didn't want people thinking of me as Cancer Victim, Simon Hoggart, smiling through his pain." Dad certainly didn't like pity. He was upfront about his illness and death sentence to family and friends, but rarely dwelled on it or asked for any sympathy.

Another reason was that he felt that cancer has already been so well written about. Among others John Diamond and Philip Gould had already done such thorough jobs, what else did he have to add?

At the back of his mind, Dad was definitely always trying to decide whether he could get a column (ideally a whole book) out of something. Perhaps he should have asked his readers for their own cancer stories, which he could have then pasted together, changed the names, added a bit of funny commentary, and had it published in time for Christmas. But this would have changed the tone of his pieces, which he always kept light and amusing. "You've got to get a joke out of it" was the main piece of advice he gave me about writing.

In the end, his big idea was for a TV show idea called "Celebrity Cancer Ward", inspired by the few well-known figures he bumped into during treatment. Dad would host it and each episode would track the progress of the well-known contributors' progress. Unsurprisingly, this was never seriously pitched. But I'm mentioning it in print here, so we will all know whose idea it originally was if it ever gets made, which it shouldn't.

So this is my attempt to provide the column he wanted to write. He always intended to do it himself, telling Mum, my brother, Richard, and me, as well as the nurses, exactly what he'd say to everyone. But he grew increasingly tired and kept postponing it to the next day. I tried to take notes, only to be reminded to "keep them laughing". He was still keeping us laughing at this point, just a bit.

During an emotional moment for me I asked him through my tears whether he had any life advice. He squeezed my hand and thought for a while before answering: "When you change a tyre, make sure you unscrew the bolts first before lifting the wheel." Firm advice from a man who – as my mother was quick to point out – has never owned his own car, let alone changed a tyre in his life.

Dad worked for the Guardian for 33 years – with 12 years on the Observer in the middle – and the main thing he wanted to say at the end was a "thank you" to his readers for their many years of loyalty. It brought a huge amount of joy to his life.

He was grateful whenever anyone got in touch, sending in clippings and jokes, not to mention all the excruciating round robin letters and gap year emails. He even recalled with fond amusement the few regulars who never failed to write in and point out the mistake whenever he got something wrong.

I was reading a novel in hospital last week and found, not for the first time, that he'd read it before and was using a reader's letter as a bookmark.

A couple of snippets from a useless Tesco label recommending that its beef mince be used in "recipe dishes" and that their pudding rice is "ideal for rice pudding".

So thanks so much to everyone who helped keep him laughing too.