Journalist and broadcaster whose career was halted by

Journalist and broadcaster John Diamond, who died of cancer aged 47 on 2 March, 2001, had turned his talents to chronicling the condition as his health deteriorated.

His work captured the imagination of journalists worldwide, not least the honesty of his writing, which reminded people that he was neither brave nor courageous in the face of death, something captured in his book Because Cowards Get Cancer too.

The cancer halted his broadcasting career until he had mastered a new “voice”, but he never accepted the sounds that then emerged were his own, and so committed himself to print.

His column on cancer won him a prestigious What The Papers Say Award, and his book was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize. He allowed a BBC documentary to follow his treatment both in fighting the cancer and his struggle to talk properly.

John Diamond was born on 10 May, 1953, at Stoke Newington, the son of a biochemist research scientist and a fashion designer, and was one of three children.

He was brought up in a secular Jewish household, grew up in lower Clapton and later Woodford Green before attending the City of London School on a scholarship from the age of 11. He joined the Labour Party at 16.

He went on to train as a teacher at Trent Park College , now Middlesex University , and actually went into teaching at Dalston Mount School for Girls from 1975 before taking up journalism full time, when he quickly became a columnist at the Sunday Times.

While writing at the Sunday Times, he met his second wife, Nigella Lawson, who has since also found fame in broadcasting. They had two children together, Cosima and Bruno.

He earned regular columns at the Daily Mirror, The Times and occasionally for the Daily Telegraph.

His interest in technology led to him being a presenter on BBC’s Tomorrow’s World and he wrote award-winning columns for computer magazines.

Mr Diamond’s other broadcast work included Fourth Column, a weekly show on Radio Four, The People’s Parliament and Out of Hours, for late night chat on Radio Five Live.

His cancer manifested itself first in aches and pains, then a lump on his neck, after which investigations showed a lump on his tongue, which meant part, and then all, of it had to be removed.

In 1999 the cancer had spread too much to be tackled by surgery, and he died two years later.

While ill, he heard himself on a radio broadcast recorded years before, and was struck by the way people take life for granted. He said: “He was the one who didn't realise what a boon an unimpaired voice was, who ate his food without stopping to think about its remarkable flavour, who was criminally profligate with words, who took his wife and children and friends for granted - in short, who didn't know he was living."

His widow, Nigella, opened The John Diamond Voice Laboratory at the Royal Marsden Hospital , London , in September 2002.