Carol Vorderman says she will go to assisted dying facility if she is diagnosed with terminal illness

carol vorderman says she will go to assisted dying facility if she is diagnosed with terminal illness

Speaking on her radio show on LBC, Carol Vorderman said she wants to ‘die with dignity’ – LBC

Carol Vorderman has said she will go to an assisted dying facility if she is ever diagnosed with a terminal illness.

The TV presenter, 63, says she has already decided she will travel to an assisted dying facility if she develops an end-stage disease and has discussed the topic with her children.

Speaking on her radio show on LBC, Vorderman said she wants to “die with dignity” after seeing her mother suffer at the hands of cancer until she died in 2017.

It comes as Dame Esther Rantzen, the 83-year-old TV presenter battling stage four lung cancer, fights for a change in the law around assisted dying after revealing at the end of last year that she had joined Dignitas.

Vorderman told her listeners on Sunday: “I have already chosen – just like Dame Esther – that if the situation is such that I’m given a diagnosis of a terminal illness, then I will choose to go abroad and die that way with dignity, and not subject myself or my family to the only pathway which is available in the UK.”

Edwina Davies, the former Countdown presenter’s mother, died at the age of 88 in June 2017 after battling cancer four times.

She had raised Carol as a single parent and lived with the LBC host for most of her life.

carol vorderman says she will go to assisted dying facility if she is diagnosed with terminal illness

Carol Vorderman, right, with her mother Edwina and brother Anton in 2004 – DAVE HOGAN/GETTY

Mrs Davies, also known as Jean, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in her early 70s, before developing kidney cancer and a large melanoma on her scalp.

Carol revealed her mother was “crying in pain” and couldn’t eat properly towards the end of her life.

She said: “Mum and I were very close. I mean really, really close. I had grown up very poor with mum as a single parent. My brother and sister are quite a bit older than me. And we had done all sorts together when I was growing up – including once running away to the circus.

“I was her baby and she felt a special responsibility for me. And that was how I felt about my mum.

“So mum lived with me from when I was 21 until she died in 2017. We bought a house together in Leeds, she wrote into Countdown to get me the job – she forged my signature on the application form, can you believe?

“And when I got to the grand old age of 25, she started working for me, and she carried on working for me for decades.”

‘Mum I can’t do anything more for you’

She continued: “She lived with us – she lived with me, she lived with us when I was married all that time, then she lived with us when I was divorced. She lived with me and my children and we came as a team of four. She was my every day until she wasn’t.

“Mum had three cancers from when she was in her early 70s. She had ovarian cancer, and then she had kidney cancer, and then she had a very large melanoma removed from her scalp.

“Two years after that – we come to 2016, 2017 – she was in a lot of pain and she couldn’t eat properly. And she had become very anxious about going out unless it was with me and the kids, or with my sister or my brother.

“I remember the Sunday morning when she – we didn’t know at the time – but she had cancer everywhere at this point. She was crying with pain and she didn’t want to go to the doctor.

“And I said ‘mum I can’t do anything more – making you another cup of tea isn’t going to cut it anymore, I have to get you to hospital’. So I took her to the Bristol Royal Infirmary, which is our local, and they took their tests and their scans and she was in overnight.

“And when I went back first thing the next day, the consultant came round and they told her she had terminal cancer.

“She had a choice whether she wanted to receive chemotherapy, or radiotherapy, or whatever the treatment may be. And she said she didn’t – she wanted to leave the treatment, not to have the treatment, and to die without that. It was very hard as a daughter to hear those words”

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Carol explained how doctors prescribed her mother morphine while she cared for her at home, but after a few weeks, the pain started to come back.

She died just 10 weeks after being given the terminal cancer diagnosis.

The LBC host said she has discussed assisted dying with her children Cameron and Katie, and has decided that she will travel to an assisted dying facility if she is ever diagnosed with a terminal condition.

She said: “I have spoken to my children about it, particularly my son – we live together and I suppose in many ways we have a similar relationship to me and my mum.

“I don’t know if she’d been given a choice whether or not she would’ve taken assisted dying. She was a Catholic and I don’t know whether that would’ve persuaded her not to do so.

“But the point of my story today really is, would she have taken a chance at assisted dying? I know I would.”

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