THE GREAT British Bake Off star, Dame Prue Leith, has opened up about her brother’s painful death, which she said was “desperate to watch.”
Prue, 84, lost her brother David to bone cancer in 2012.
During an interview on Sky News’ The UK Tonight with Sarah-Jane Mee earlier this week, Prue detailed David’s death and revealed that he was “in absolute agony.”
The TV judge explained that David spent the weeks and months before his death in hospital where he suffered and explicitly asked to die.
“For his family to be around while he’s crying, begging to die, begging to be given more morphine, it was desperate to watch,” Prue said.
She explained: “In the last three weeks of his life he was spending I suppose one hour in every four in absolute agony because they would give him more morphine, but either not enough or not frequently enough.”
The Bake Off star said that when David wasn’t given morphine, he was in “absolute screaming agony.”
“But nobody seemed to be looking at the whole thing from his point of view. It was all to do with the doctor’s rounds,” Prue added.
She explained that the doctors were reluctant to prescribe morphine too often because it can be highly addictive. However, her response was: “If he’s got three weeks to live, I don’t care if he’s as high as a kite.”
Prue noted that her brother would have been much more comfortable if was able to be at home during his final weeks.
Giving an example, she said: “My younger brother had a really good death, my elder brother had the one we described.”
“I want to die like my younger brother did, at home, free of pain,” Prue added.
Prue has been very vocal in the campaign to legalise assisted death in the U.K.
During her interview with Sky, the Bake Off judge said it seemed like MPs are starting to get on board with this campaign.
“‘I feel quite hopeful about this. We’re going to have a new government. The word is getting out. More and more MPs are coming over to our side.
“I think the next parliament will have an assisted dying bill which will be humane and in years to come, people will look back and think why on earth didn’t they do that before?” Prue concluded.