Brian Rix: Legalise euthanasia so I can slip away
FORMER actor Brian Rix has pleaded for euthanasia to be legalised so that he can be allowed to ‘slip away peacefully’.
The disability campaigner, 92, has revealed that he is terminally ill. In a letter to Baroness D’Souza, Speaker of the House of Lords, Lord Rix said he hopes Parliament will act ‘as soon as possible’ to make it possible for those with a terminal condition to be assisted to die.
Lord Rix, the president of learning disability charity Mencap, voted against the Assisted Dying Bill when it came before the House of Lords in 2006.
He was concerned that people with learning difficulties might become the unwilling victims of euthanasia – his daughter, Shelley, was born with Down’s syndrome in 1951.
But in his letter, he told Lady D’Souza: ‘My position has changed. As a dying man, who
‘Body keeps me alive in great discomfort’
has been dying now for several weeks, I am only too conscious that the laws of this country make it impossible for people like me to be helped on their way, even though the family is supportive of this position and everything that needs to be done has been dealt with.
‘Unhappily, my body seems to be constructed in such a way that it keeps me alive in great discomfort when all I want is to be allowed to slip into a sleep, peacefully, legally and without any threat to the medical or nursing profession. I am sure there are many others like me who having finished with life wish their life to finish.’
His letter continues: ‘I can only ask that once again the House of Lords brings the UK up to date by allowing legal euthanasia after all other avenues have been pursued.
‘Please raise the question again in the House of Lords so that people like me do not continue to suffer untold misery for want of a kind alternative.
‘Only with a legal Euthanasia Bill on the statute books will the many people who find themselves in the same situation as me be able to slip away peacefully in their sleep instead of dreading the night.’
Born in East Yorkshire, Lord Rix began acting professionally at 18. After entering the RAF he volunteered as a Bevin Boy in the coal mines during the Second World War.
He returned to acting after the end of the war and formed his own theatre company in 1947.
For 30 years, he was one of the West End’s best-loved faces. As actor-manager of the Whitehall Theatre, he was a regular feature of its farces, in scripts that usually resulted in him losing his trousers. He went on to be a regular on television, starring in more than 90 comedy plays for the BBC.
Shelley died in 2005 and his Inverness-born actress wife Elspet Gray, who played Prince Edmund’s mother in The Black Adder, died in 2013.