Dame Esther Rantzen has described living with terminal cancer, saying she “didn’t expect to see last Christmas” – as she criticised delays to assisted dying legislation.
Dame Esther told Mornings With Ridge And Frost she has accepted “there is no cure” for her condition, but said treatment had “delayed” her cancer by three years.
The TV star, who was a household name in the 1970s and ’80s as host of the BBC’s That’s Life, joined Dignitas the same year she was diagnosed in 2023, labelling the laws governing assisted dying at the time as “a mess”.
As a supporter of new legislation, she said The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, commonly known as the Assisted Dying Bill and making its way through parliament, “would never have happened [become law] in time for me anyway”.
Dame Esther added: “So I’ve always been really fighting for future generations that they will have the choice if they are terminally ill.”
She accused the House of Lords of “behaving very strangely”, suggesting the bill’s passage was being held up by “very vocal” lobby groups who would never be satisfied with proposed amendments and are “opposed to the whole concept in principle”.
Pointing to “some of the disability groups, some of the religious groups”, she said they were “filibustering and using every method they can to obstruct what the House of Commons has already passed and what the public is a large majority in favour of, because it gives us the dignity of choice”.
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Dame Esther said it was time the House of Lords “looked very carefully at that democratic duty. This is not the way we run things in this country. We don’t get small lobby groups of minorities objecting in principle, and therefore frustrating the Democratic will of the public. And the Commons”.
She was speaking as the NHS announced it was extending a pilot scheme using AI and robotics to improve early detection of the UK’s third most common cancer, which Dame Esther called “a very hopeful sign that things are really radically changing when it comes to the treatment of cancer”.
Since NHS England started its screening programme in 2019, more than 1.5 million people who have ever smoked have been invited to have their lung health checked, but only if aged between 55 and 74.
But the Childline founder, who revealed she is not being treated currently, said she did not understand the programme’s apparent upper age limit, as “75 is the new 55, so I don’t know why people like me at 85 have been ruled out completely on the grounds that we’re past it and we should be grateful for what we got. They [ministers] might have a look at that”.
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More than 49,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer each year, and Dame Esther said she understood “what it’s like if they can’t treat you”.
She said: “But this is on the basis that they can treat you early, and they can stop it spreading, and they can make a difference to your life expectancy. So I welcome it, of course, for other people.”
