Euthanasia Chic In The UK

UK provocateur Terry Pritchett is at it again. He's got early stage Alzheimer's and he likes the idea of euthanasia. That means instant celebrity and credibility. Go figure. His previous claim to pro-deather fame was suggesting that "euthanasia booths" should be placed on street corners to cater to members of the public who wish to kick the bucket. Now he's back expanding his argument. The press, of course, reports his insights every-so-breathlessly.

A fantastic voyage

TERRY PRATCHETT is trying to catch a mouse. "Right down there, the bugger!" he urges Rob, his assistant. "Oh!" he yelps, "I'm going to get him chucked out."

We'd been on the phone for most of an hour, and before the rodent scampered into view Pratchett had been explaining why assisted deaths for the terminally ill will eventually become widely accepted.

"It will happen because people die. Generations die. Once upon a time, and well within my lifetime, [some thought] homosexuals, ooh what nasty people. Now they are all over the bloody place." A comic writer's pause. "And jolly good job too!" You're stuffed if you're in the entertainment industry and don't like gays, he says, in his breathy, slightly pinched voice, the pronunciation something like David Bellamy's, in which the "r" in "very" and "round" sometimes approaches a "w".

"When I was a boy, people still got hanged. What happens is the next generation looks down at the stupidity of the last few generations and says, `You're bloody stupid, how can you possibly sit still for that?"'

What we are sitting still for, he says, is prolonging our lives in the face of needless pain, patchy old-age care and being told we have to hang around "because God wants you to". There's a punitive feeling to the whole thing, he says, as if we were atoning for something. "Not really, I just got Alzheimer's." more