Dame Esther Rantzen wants to die well - can joining Dignitas really deliver?

After a stage 4 lung cancer diagnosis Dame Esther Rantzen has said she will ’buzz off to Zurich’ if treatment is not successful. Alex Noel discusses whether we can demand a ’good death’ through assisted dying, as even Jesus suffered horribly in his final hour.

Dame Esther Rantzen - much loved journalist, broadcaster and campaigner - shared on The Today Podcast in December that she has joined Dignitas, the not-for-profit assisted dying clinic in Switzerland. She is perhaps best known for hosting That’s Life! And for what has been described as one of the greatest moments in television history: surprising Nicholas Winton (who rescued 669 children from the Holocaust, bringing them to safety in the UK), with an audience full of people who owed their lives to him.

At 83 Esther Rantzen is exactly the same age as my mother, in fact they were born a week apart in June 1940 - less than a year into World War II. As you might expect, that makes her decision and its implications feel especially close to home. And while my own mum has no intention of joining Dignitas, it has made me consider the position it would put me in if circumstances were different.