Asked how the family were coping, she quipped: “Great – because we live in denial about everything. But obviously, seriously, it’s a really weird time as anybody who knows who’s got someone that they adore who has a terminal diagnosis. You just live in a state of anxiety between the scans,” she admitted. “Mum is incredible. I don’t know how she’s doing it. She is surviving, not only the cancer, but the treatments as well. She is obviously now palliative. The treatments have stopped working,” she confessed, while acknowledging her mother was continuing to campaign despite this.
In the absence of the Assisted Dying Bill being passed, Rebecca admitted the 85-year-old TV legend is preparing to travel abroad to die alone in order to spare her family the repercussions of her actions.
“She’s leaving the door open to perhaps going abroad, should that awful moment, that crossroads come to her, and if there isn’t a law here, by that point… going to Dignatas or somewhere like that – that’s still the case,” she said, revealing her mother’s end of life plans.
“We’re in this odd privileged position, if that’s the word, whereby she can afford to have the death that she wants and deserves. She will pay £15,000 to go to Dignitas. She will go before she has to.
“She will go months before she would die here, and she will go alone because we contacted a criminal solicitor, and we said, ‘how likely is it that we’ll be investigated and prosecuted?’
**** Ensure our latest showbiz headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as a Preferred Source in your Google search settings. ****
“And they said, because we have stuck our head above the parapet, because we have campaigned for other people for this… we will be investigated as a family,” she revealed.
“I will possibly lose my enhanced DBS, which means my work with Childline, which is so important to me, and my counselling work, will not go forward.
“I will possibly lose my job as a journalist. My brother’s job as a cardiologist might be in danger, and my sister’s job as well.
“And my mum doesn’t want that for us, so she is not allowing us to go with her, so she goes alone to die in Switzerland. And she does not deserve that. It’s utterly heartbreaking,” she said.
