The writer and political commentator Bob Ellis says he may have only weeks to live.
“The news is very bad and I may have months to live but it is more like weeks,” he posted on his personal blog on Sunday.
Ellis, writing his blog Table Talk from Mona Vale hospital on Sydney’s northern beaches, said on Friday he was awaiting tests on his liver function, “which look ominous”. He warned that the blog “may cease altogether” within weeks.
He had aggressive liver cancer, he told Fairfax Media. “I’m angry because I’m doing my best writing now.”
Ellis characteristically did not miss the opportunity to take a potshot at Tony Abbott, writing on the blog:
“I commend Mona Vale hospital, a very fine place to be. Abbott is reducing it, and replacing it with something nearer his home in Forestville.”
Ellis has been a prolific writer of books, plays, screenplays, speeches and commentary for almost 50 years.
He has had a tempestuous relationship with the Labor party, having written extensively on its history and penned speeches for a number of its prominent personalities, but also fiercely criticised its leaders, most notably Julia Gillard.
One book on Labor, Goodbye Jerusalem, had to be pulped and reprinted after Abbott and the former treasurer Peter Costello, and their wives, sued for defamation.
In 1994 he stood unsuccessfully as an independent against Bronwyn Bishop in the federal seat of Mackellar.
Ellis said on his blog he hoped to be able to launch his latest book, a “political fiction” called Abbott: The Worst Three Hundred Days, in August if his health permitted.
On Monday he posted: “Am feeling a bit crook, and hearing of miracle cures ... There have been many, many lovely messages.”
