LONG-SERVING Oxford GP and best-selling author Dr Ann McPherson was given an emotional farewell by many of her patients.

More than 180 of them attended a tea party at St John's College, a short distance from the Beaumont Street Surgery, where she has worked for nearly 30 years, to mark her retirement.

Dr McPherson told patients she was having to give up the job she has always loved after being diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas.

The GP has been involved in a long battle with illness, since learning she had breast cancer 12 years ago.

Thanking her patients for their support, Dr McPherson said: "I have very much enjoyed working in the Beaumont Street Surgery, where it has been a great privilege to work with such a lovely group of patients, many of whom have become friends.

"I have decided I cannot carry on because it would not be good for me or the patients. It will be strange not going back to the surgery, which has been my life.

"But I felt there should be an opportunity to say goodbye to my patients and for them to say goodbye to me. I wanted it to be a happy event."

Her intention now is to spend time with her grandchildren, but also continue working to build on the success story of Dipex, the Database of Individual Patient Experience, the award- winning website she created.

Dipex offers people the opportunity to watch, listen to or read interviews with people suffering from a wide range of illnesses, including cancers, heart disease, mental health and neurological conditions.

The site attracts more than two million hits a year.

The 62-year-old GP believes her own experience of being a patient has been "odd but instructive", teaching her a great deal about how people are treated by the NHS.

She said: "There is this whole thing about choice, which I think must have been drawn up by people who have never been ill.

"What people want is to be looked after properly, by people who have their interest at heart, and told what is going on."

Her own ability to explain health issues to thousands of people of all ages has not only helped establish her as Oxford's best-known GP, but it has also resulted in her becoming a best-selling author.

In 1982, she co-wrote Mum, I Feel Funny with Aidan Macfarlane, the then head of child health services for Oxford- shire.

But it was her Diary of a Teenage Health Freak, which really took off, selling more than a million copies and becoming a hit television series.

The main character, 14-year-old Peter Payne, constantly worried about his health, fretting about everything from sex to smelly feet.

Two years ago, she set up a new website, Youth Health Talk, which became the main online health resource for young people.