Mr Packer refused treatment for his failing heart and kidneys, choosing to stay at home in his mansion in Sydney rather than be taken to hospital for further dialysis and medication. “I think his words were ‘This is my time’,” said Alan Jones, a broadcaster and friend, after visiting his family.

Mr Jones said that Mr Packer spoke to him before Christmas. “He said ‘Look. I can’t eat what I want to eat. I can’t do what I want to do and I can’t go where I want to go. Son, what am I doing here?’,” he recalled.

Ian Bailey, who has been Mr Packer’s cardiologist for eight years, called him “the bravest patient I have ever known”.

“He knew his body better than the doctors did and made his own decisions about treatment,” said Mr Bailey.

“He was going into organ failure last week and suffering. He was ready to die. There were no more rabbits to pull out of the hat.”

Dr Bailey said that kidney failure — of a kidney that Mr Packer had received in a transplant in 2000 — was the immediate cause of his death at 68.

The kidney was donated by Nick Ross, his helicopter pilot, who described him as “a wonderful human being”. “I have known Kerry for 25 years and we have shared some fantastic times together,” he said. “I consider it a privilege to have given him my kidney when he so desperately needed it. A part of me died yesterday too.”

Mr Packer died on Boxing Day with his wife, Ros, his daughter Gretel, 39, and his son, James, 37, at his bedside. He leaves behind an estimated fortune of £3 billion and a media empire that will be inherited by his son, who will become the fourth generation to run the family’s business.

But John Alexander, 54, the chief executive of Mr Packer’s Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd — Australia’s largest domestic media group — is expected to emerge as a key figure alongside the younger Mr Packer.

Having begun his career on the now defunct Sydney tabloid The Sun, Mr Alexander was made business editor of the Sydney Morning Herald in 1984 before becoming the paper’s editor, where he was commended for reversing declines in circulation.

Shares in PBL dropped 1.9 per cent in early trading on the Sydney Stock Exchange this morning.

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation, which is the parent company of The Times, called Mr Packer “a lifelong friend, fierce competitor and the most successful businessman of our generation”.

“As a broadcaster, he had an uncanny knack of knowing what people across the country were thinking and this finely tuned antenna made him the best broadcaster this country has seen.”

John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, described Mr Packer as “a generous, very philanthropic person” and “one of the dominant figures, if not the dominant Australian figure, of the media scene in this country for more than a generation”.

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