Longtime Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek has written a memoir titled The Answer Is…
Simon & Schuster announced Tuesday that The Answer Is…: Reflections on My Life will come out July 21, the day before Trebek’s 80th birthday.
The announcement was also shared on the official Jeopardy! Twitter account.
“Wondering what Alex has been up to at home? He wrote a book!” the tweet read.
According to the publisher, the Jeopardy! host will share “illuminating personal anecdotes” along with thoughts on everything from his favourite guests to spirituality and philanthropy.
“I want people to know a little more about the person they have been cheering on for the past year,” Trebek writes in his book.
The publisher’s description says: “the book combines illuminating personal anecdotes with Trebek’s thoughts on a range of topics, including marriage, parenthood, education, success, spirituality and philanthropy.”
“Trebek also addresses the questions he gets asked most often by Jeopardy! fans, such as what prompted him to shave his signature moustache, his insights on legendary players like Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer and his opinion of Will Ferrell‘s Saturday Night Live impersonation,” the description reads. “The book uses a novel structure inspired by Jeopardy!, with each chapter title in the form of a question, and features dozens of never-before-seen photos that candidly capture Trebek over the years.”
Trebek gave an update on his Stage 4 pancreatic cancer in early March.
Trebek posted a video to his Twitter account saying that he’d beaten the one-year survival rate for Stage 4 pancreatic cancer patients, which is 18 per cent.
“I’m very happy to report I have just reached that marker,” Trebek said.
“Now, I’d be lying if I said the journey had been an easy one. There were some good days but a lot of not-so-good days,” he shared.
Trebek said that he jokes with friends, saying: “The cancer won’t kill me, the chemo treatments will.”
He said there were “moments of great pain” and he experienced days when “certain bodily functions no longer functioned.”
The 79-year-old game show host said his oncologist tried to “cheer him up” and told him that the two-year survival rate is only seven per cent but “he was certain that one year from now, the two of us would be sitting in his office celebrating my second anniversary of survival.”
“If we — because so many of us are involved in this same situation — if we take it just one day at a time, with a positive attitude, anything is possible,” Trebek concluded.
Pancreatic cancer has one of the lowest survival rates of all cancers. According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, the five-year survival rate from 2008 to 2014 was 8.5 per cent. Stage 4 is the most advanced form of the disease.
In Canada, an estimated 5,500 people were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2017 — 4,800 died from it, according to the Canadian Cancer Society.
— With files from the Associated Press
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