Cameron Pays Tribute to `Amazing' Father After His Death on French Holiday

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron issued a statement paying tribute to his father Ian, who died yesterday at the age of 77.

“Our dad was an amazing man -- a real life-enhancer,” Cameron said in the e-mailed statement, issued on behalf of the premier and his family today. “He touched a lot of lives in lots of different ways and was a brilliant husband and father. You could never be down for long when he was around.”

Ian Cameron, a former partner at stockbrokers Panmure Gordon, died while on holiday in France after suffering a stroke and heart complications, the prime minister’s office in London said.

The death was “unexpected and sudden,” Cameron said in the statement, and the family takes consolation from the fact that he was happy on holiday with friends and his wife, Mary, when he was taken ill.

Cameron also thanked French President Nicolas Sarkozy for helping him reach his father before his death. Sarkozy provided a helicopter for Cameron to fly to the hospital in Toulon.

“I am extremely grateful to President Sarkozy who helped me get to the hospital while dad was still with us so I could say goodbye,” Cameron said. “We would like to thank Nicolas and everyone at the hospital who worked so hard to look after dad.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Thomas Penny in London at tpenny@bloomberg.net; Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net.

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