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22 June 2012

Posted by DMC on 23 June 2012 in Diary |

Yesterday, I received a telephone call from a company, which I think call itself Love Films. The caller explained that she was making a film for television (Channel 4) on the assisted suicide controversy which has rumbled on in the media over the past two or three years every now and then a patient, with little or no quality of life, applies to the court to be allowed to die but to date they have not succeeded and anyone who assists them in their endeavour could be liable for imprisonment. The lady from Love Films was telephoning ask if I would be prepared to appear in the programme on assisted suicide. I explained that I last exposure to the media had not been a happy one . (See 22 February 2010 and 24 February 2010 entries) and, in any case, my blog was about living and getting the best out of every day, rather than dying.’ My lovely’ was in the room at the time of the call, which is only speakers, signalled to me, in no uncertain terms, that we should have nothing to do with i

My regular readers will recall when this whole issue came in connection up with Sir Terry Pratchett’s visit to Switzerland (see 7 April 2012 entry) when he was considering how best to end his own life before. his Parkinson’s disease reached the point when he could no longer make a rational decision

Sir Terry Pratchett programme was quite well done except and that I felt the brushed over the option to suicide, the hospices, which I am led to believe allows you to die peacefully painlessly and with dignity.

I had put it to the BBC, through the director of the original programme, that they could consider making a sequel to the original programme, based on Sir Terry Pratchett, exploring the hospice alternative. I would have been happy to have considered taking part in that programme as I knew little or nothing about hospices myself. Had I been asked what I understood a hospice to be, I would have said a place where the terminally ill go to die in peaceful surroundin

Doctor Margaret Saunders, a warm kindly lady, of the Arthur Rank Hospice, Cambridge, had assured me that they were more than that and she would be happy for me to come and see for myself. She also said that she would also he interest to learn more about the BBC’s film, if they agreed to make

Reverting then to the speaker phone telephone call, despite ‘my lovely’s’ frantic signalling to the effect that we should have nothing to do with any further publicity, I agreed at least to meet this lady. I asked her if she would be kind enough to telephone my wife direct to make the appointment.

Alice took the call in the hallway off the kitchen but she reported to me afterwards that she had told this lady that we wanted nothing to do with Channel 4, which was a rubbish channel producing such horrors as Big Brother and so far as she was concerned she wanted neither of us have anything to do with it. Nevertheless, she was faithful to my request to make an appointment.

I shall certainly meet with this lady and find out precisely what this programme is about; how it is structured and who else will be appearing in it. Then, and only then, will I decide whether I wish to participate or allow them to quote from my blog, most of which, this lady caller informed me she had read.

To finish today’s entry I have some wonderful one-liners from Frank Carson. Which reminds me that I was told, some long time ago when I started public speaking, that it was not the joke so much as the way you told it that made it funny. Click here and try for yourself one or two of these one-liners when you next have to speak in public, I think that they admirably illustrate this advice.


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