The wife of the British TV presenter Michael Mosley has confirmed the “devastating” news that her husband has been found dead on the Greek island of Symi. Dr Clare Bailey said she and the couple’s four children took comfort in the fact that he “had almost made it”, after his body was found close to a coastal resort on Sunday. “We’re taking comfort in the fact that he so very nearly made it. He did an incredible climb, took the wrong route and collapsed where he couldn’t be easily seen by the extensive search team.” Mosley, 67, went missing after going for a walk on the island on Wednesday, sparking an intensive five-day search. Confirming that he had been found, Bailey said she did not “know quite where to begin”. In a statement, she said: “It’s devastating to have lost Michael, my wonderful, funny, kind and brilliant husband. We had an incredibly lucky life together. We loved each other very much and were so happy together.” Bailey, who met Mosley at medical school, said she was “incredibly proud” of the couple’s children and of their resilience and support. “My family and I have been hugely comforted by the outpouring of love from people from around the world. It’s clear that Michael meant a huge amount to so many of you,” she said. She added that Mosley – who repeatedly tested scientific theories on his own body – was an adventurous man, which was “part of what made him so special”. She added: “We are so grateful to the extraordinary people on Symi who have worked tirelessly to help find him. Some of these people on the island, who hadn’t even heard of Michael, worked from dawn till dusk unasked. We’re also very grateful to the press who have dealt with us with great respect. “I feel so lucky to have our children and my amazing friends. Most of all, I feel so lucky to have had this life with Michael.” On the fifth day of what had become an increasingly frantic hunt, Mosley was reportedly discovered by a camera operator working with the state broadcaster ERT. His body was discovered on rocky terrain close to a fence, next to a small resort that is accessible only by boat or by foot. The resort is on the opposite side of the bay from where he had left his wife and friends and around 30 minutes’ walk from Pedi, where he was last seen. Extreme weather warnings have been in place this week on Symi, where temperatures have reached above 40C (104F) in the afternoon. “It is clear from his watch and clothes that it is Dr Mosley,” a police spokesperson, Konstantina Dimoglou, said. A police source told BBC News the deceased had been dead “for a number of days”. A news camera crew said they had spotted the body from a boat in the bay of Ayia Marina, having zoomed in on an image they had captured. “We located him [from a boat] when we went into the bay of Ayia Marina,” said the ERT journalist Aristides Miaoulis, who described how when the team’s camera operator looked back at his footage, he noticed “something strange”. “Looking back at the material he had got, he saw something strange near a fence, about 50 metres from the sea, and then we could see, once we zoomed in, that it was this man, because his watch was glinting [in the sun].” The island’s mayor, who was with the media team, said previously 200 people had searched the site and yet Mosley had not been found. The Hellenic coastguard was immediately called to the area, and it was taped off. It was announced that a postmortem will be conducted at Rhodes’ general hospital on Monday. Mosley’s body was transferred to the bigger island within hours of its discovery. In an initial assessment, a coroner who travelled to the island earlier on Sunday ruled out foul play, adding that there were no signs, beyond a head wound the Briton is likely to have sustained when he fell, of criminal activity. The discovery was made on the day search teams had turned their focus to a set of caves belonging to a rocky outcrop close to Ayia Marina beach. Images that had been intentionally blurred showed the remains were found on rocky land by a chain link fence close to the beach resort. At around 2pm local time (12pm BST) on Sunday, firefighters arrived at the marina by boat and carried an orange stretcher and large black bag to where the body was found; others in plain clothes and carrying briefcases went up the rocky hill, PA Media reported. Five firefighters left the island by boat with the body on a stretcher at around 2.45pm local time. On Saturday, an emergency helicopter spent hours flying across the mountainous search site on Symi between Pedi bay and Ayia Marina. Mosley set off hiking from St Nikolas beach at 1.30pm local time on Wednesday, bound for the port town of Symi, where he was staying in a house with friends, a walk of a little over 2 miles. CCTV images of Mosley taken about 20 minutes after he was last seen showed him outside a restaurant in nearby Pedi, shielding himself from the fierce sun with an umbrella. His wife raised the alarm at 7.30pm after he failed to return to the house where the couple were staying with British friends and where Mosley had left his mobile phone. A search and rescue operation was launched to locate Mosley, who is best known for his appearances on The One Show and This Morning. Bailey was later joined by the couple’s adult children on the island. The search operation was one of the biggest of its kind in living memory. Initially, investigators had focused the search on the clifftop path Mosley had taken from the beach towards Pedi. Mosley, a columnist for the Daily Mail, made a number of documentaries about diet and exercise, including the Channel 4 show Michael Mosley: Who Made Britain Fat? He was also part of the BBC series Trust Me, I’m a Doctor. Mosley was also credited for the rising popularity of the 5:2 diet, which involves fasting for two days a week to lose weight. He was named medical journalist of the year by the British Medical Association in 1995.