Prue Leith has spoken out about her views on assisted dying, ahead of her new documentary on the subject.
In recent history, the Great British Bake Off judge has been vocal in her support for a law allowing assisted dying to be introduced in the UK, having seen her own brother suffering in his final days.
Speaking to Radio Times magazine in the lead-up to the documentary, Prue shared that her own will states that if she were suffering at time of her death, and assisted dying is legal, she’d “want to be offered” the chance to make a decision for herself.
When asked what she’d do if assisted dying were not legal at the time, she responded: “Well, I’ll have to find an illegal way!
“I’ve had a fantastically happy, wonderful life and I wouldn’t want to spend the last three months in agony. I’d want to go out nice and quietly, when I want to, with my family.”
These views are in stark contrast to her son, Conservative MP Danny Kruger, with whom she appears in a new Channel 4 documentary, Prue And Danny’s Death Road Trip, exploring the subject in more depth.
While Prue admitted she was “nervous” about making the documentary with her son, in case they ended up “angry with each other”, he insisted they “haven’t fallen out over this at all”.
The Tory MP said: “I have huge respect for my mum because I know she cares passionately about this – she saw her brother die so badly.”
On how seeing her own brother dying before his death impacted her personal views, Prue shared: “He realised in the end that the only way he could die was just to refuse the antibiotics, which he was allowed to do. But what happens is your lungs fill up with liquid, you’re not able to breathe, so that’s how he died in the end.
“It was such agony for [the family]. His daughter said that she sat one night with a pillow in her hands when he was right towards the end – when his breathing was getting very bad and he was obviously in agony – and she was just trying to summon up the courage to put the pillow over his face. And she said, ‘I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill my father’.”
Read Prue Leith’s interview in full in the new issue of Radio Times magazine, on sale now.
