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Australian Story - Season 31 Episode 11 -
A Year of Living Gratefully (James Valentine)
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A Year of Living Gratefully (James Valentine)
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00:15Hello. In the 1980s, James Valentine was the gifted sax player of the Australian rock band
00:23Models and for the past 20 years he's been a unique and hugely popular presenter with
00:29ABC Radio in Sydney. In 2024 he went public with a cancer diagnosis and sadly that wonderfully
00:39whimsical, whip-smart and joyful man died 12 days ago at the age of 64. Australian Story has
00:48been honoured that James allowed us to follow him for the last year of his journey.
00:58Anyone who's played music from childhood will feel the fact that you can still do it and the fact
01:03that it's still part of your life decades on is amazing.
01:11You know when I play there's eight-year-old me with a recorder, you know there's fifteen-year-old me
01:16getting a my first saxophone like they're all still there playing away now and there's still
01:22this guy trying to go oh wow how do you do that?
01:28Well hello. I think the normal thing for people of our maturity when we get together
01:35we usually start with a little health update don't we?
01:42Last year I had esophageal cancer um it's a you know with a pretty heavy diagnosis and the original
01:48proposed treatment was we chop it out oh the tumour nope the esophagus we're gonna take the whole
01:56thing out and chuck it away. It was terrifying when he got the diagnosis I thought well if they're gonna
02:03snip out his esophagus and stitch him up what does that mean for his playing and I thought that would
02:10be a heartbreak for it. But then as is my want I tended to talk about it and so I
02:19went on air I spoke about it.
02:21Well this is a bit of a strange moment for me and probably for you I've got to go off
02:26and deal with
02:27something and the thing I've got to go off and deal with is cancer. It never occurred to us as
02:34I think
02:34it wouldn't occur to many people to think there's an alternative treatment. I heard from a group of
02:39doctors in Westmead hospital who came back to me and said eh we don't do that we'll just take the
02:45tumour
02:45out we'll have a look at you. I said esophagus you didn't get it. When he got the option to
02:51not do it
02:52or to try something else he was pretty ecstatic and pretty like let's go.
03:00Being able to play again when it looked like this was the thing that was most likely to be taken
03:05away.
03:09It's an unbelievable joy.
03:26So this morning you're speaking in Parkside Ballroom 1 which is just over there.
03:30Okay then. All right. What am I saying?
03:37This whole process in terms of the medical stuff it's made me reflect a lot on how we get medical
03:44information. I think I've had a bit of this stuff down me at some point. I mean here I am
03:49somebody
03:51who's at the centre of information who could talk about it publicly and then get a response.
03:58What do you do if you don't have that? How do you deal with this stuff?
04:01What do you think? Esophagus or Great Barrier Reef? I mean it's marvellous what they can do isn't it?
04:10People are in a dilemma. They don't know who the best in the area is. They've got to somebody they
04:15trust but there are choices and how do you make the right choice?
04:19Is it okay if we chose some slides of your resection? Yeah yeah.
04:22We invited James because it was a great opportunity to get the patient's perspective
04:27from someone who's very good at communicating and to learn that you know we can do better.
04:33So many of you will recognise James. He's a beloved Australian radio presenter and musician.
04:39He's going to talk today with us about his journey.
04:41Can I just say you know what a great part of the journey it has been to end up here.
04:44I've never
04:44heard so much discussion of the rectum in my life. So riveting, riveting.
04:50What was the thing that made you select one approach versus the other?
04:53I got it down to like really nothing more than well I can do yours first right.
04:58There's a point at which the patient can't understand the information.
05:01In fact I was dealing with two people who were both right. That was part of the confusion.
05:12So this is Ballarat in Victoria where I grew up. I'm here to go and visit my mother and say
05:18hi,
05:18which I do every few months. She's 98. She became a broadcaster when she was 18 in 1945 straight
05:25after the war. It is sort of like from a young age I'm very familiar with radio studios.
05:34Nina, his mum, explains James to me because she also was a radio broadcaster.
05:41She was a very fiercely independent woman for the time.
05:44So we've dug up your past, okay, found everything.
05:48She was a very formal kind of announcer. She was a champion of elocution.
05:53But she also starts submitting stuff to the ABC and ends up a stringer for Australia All Over,
05:57which is Macca's program now. This is the judge's report for you.
06:04Recitation, boys and girls over 10 and under 13 years.
06:07Judge's comments, pretty voice and bright facial expression.
06:11Good heavens. What happened to that?
06:14I think I must have been born a little show off.
06:17Gosh, where did I get it from?
06:20There was no other musicality in the family. I don't know where it came from,
06:25except for the fact that he had to distinguish himself from these two sporty older brothers.
06:31I started playing music at school when they handed out the recorders.
06:35I went back the next week and I could play the tunes.
06:38And they're going, hmm, no one's ever done that before.
06:44I think once you start playing woodwind and you go through the whole range,
06:49once he hit saxophone, he realised that that was his great love.
06:53But I also started to listen to jazz and I just went, oh, that's interesting.
06:57By the time I finished high school, I could study music, you know, is that all right?
07:01And my parents, you know, to their eternal credit really, were sure,
07:06if that's what you want to do, that's fine.
07:11I met James at the beginning of 1983.
07:15We were both musicians, but we were studying together.
07:18He didn't seem to know that much about pop music or rock music.
07:23James's heart was back in the 40s to 60s, you know, bebop jazz.
07:29I was very anxious to be a working musician.
07:31What I wanted to be was a great jazz player, but I also wanted to figure out how you earn
07:35money.
07:36Bad is good, the good's forever.
07:38I heard from somebody, Joe Camilleri's putting a band together.
07:41And so I turned up, auditioned and got a gig.
07:46And so I go up and down the east coast of Australia for 12 months, basically playing
07:50full time with these incredibly experienced musicians.
07:56I could feel that mainly the rock thing was working.
07:58It was good money.
07:59I kind of fell into The Models from that.
08:03And now, here's the big one, Barbados!
08:07James joins The Models, and the first record he plays on, he plays a saxophone solo,
08:13and it's a very good saxophone solo, and the song shoots up the charts.
08:22It just sort of, it took off.
08:24So it was a strange kind of thing.
08:26I didn't mean it to happen.
08:28I wasn't really part of the band, as such.
08:30They were making all the band-type decisions.
08:36I was hanging around.
08:37I'd play a lot of table tennis.
08:38I've got very good at table tennis.
08:39And then I'd go and do some sax solas.
08:41And then off we'd go on the road.
08:43It was fantastic.
08:44It was very fun.
08:49The next single they put out is Out of Mind, Out of Sight.
08:51And it's smothered in horns, and it goes straight to number one.
08:55Out of Mind, Out of Sight.
08:57James' addition to that band, we were worried it was going to ruin the band, but it really
09:01helped make the band.
09:06We then toured the US for about six or eight months.
09:09We were exhausted.
09:11And tours at that point didn't stop.
09:16I don't know that I've got a brain left at this point.
09:19I think I've stewed it.
09:21And I'm not enjoying this.
09:23I'd also met my wife by this point.
09:24You know, now wife Joanne.
09:25And I was like, well, and she's looking at me like, are you going to be this, you know,
09:30idiot rock guy forever?
09:31James Valentine from the Models and Friends.
09:33Who are your friends, James?
09:34Oh, this is Wayne and this is Joanne.
09:35It was just impossible to have a regular relationship.
09:39So he decided that he would come back and audition for the afternoon show.
09:45Everyone in Sydney went for the audition.
09:47And he ended up getting it.
09:52Hi, welcome to the afternoon show.
09:54When afternoon's finished, he ended up in commercial television and it didn't fit his personality.
10:00I got a job on Channel 10 as the entertainment reporter.
10:03It was a bit like me on the rock tours.
10:05I was drifting into an area I didn't necessarily want to be in.
10:08It's coming up to three o'clock here on Canberra's 2C Inn.
10:11Then he realised radio's where it's at, because radio is just instant.
10:17He could have this connection with the audience, but without all the fuss of TV.
10:23It's time for a VET Talkback with Mike Hayward.
10:25That very first shift I did, my memory is that I just went,
10:29yes, I love this. This is fantastic.
10:32Much of this is the product of my mother.
10:34You know, like I watched her doing it.
10:35I therefore felt quite comfortable when I got there.
10:39275-4666 is our number if you've got any questions or queries about the beast in your life.
10:44James just talks to the audience.
10:45He talks one-on-one, which is textbook broadcasting.
10:49And there's like a madness to James as well, which is very, very funny.
10:53And he allows that to come through, and he's unembarrassed by it.
10:58Welcome to ABC Radio Sydney is where it all happens.
11:02I like to have my own image everywhere, everywhere I go, just to remind myself who I am.
11:08I've been doing this shift for nearly three decades.
11:11See, that's how easy it is doing radio. I just swan in.
11:14Jen and Hannah have done it all, and I go, sure, and on we go.
11:17And so it means that you've got an audience that's, you know, you've been part of their life.
11:22I've talked about everything that's happened to me.
11:25They've told me everything that's happened to them.
11:27We'll do our session where we look at etiquette and things at 1.30 today, the done thing.
11:31It took me a year or two for me to feel confident enough to go, you know what, I'm just
11:34going to go for the silly stuff that's in my head.
11:37What does your partner use to floss her teeth?
11:39She uses her hair.
11:40The best part about it is that they're extensions.
11:43I still felt I had to interview the police commissioner or something.
11:47And it wasn't until I threw all that out that I started to go, right, here's a stupid segment.
11:53We have, this is what I live with, and that's when you call about the annoying thing that your partner
11:58does.
11:59Things are getting worse. Every night my husband sits on a special chair in the dark,
12:04and the possum jumps on his lap, and he grooms her with a special comb, and she sits there.
12:09James listens to what the guest is saying and responds in that moment. He's not scared of improvising.
12:18I do a thing on the radio called This One I Live With, which is about couples,
12:21and the standard thing that no couple can agree on is how to stash a dishwasher.
12:25I really disagree with the way you stand.
12:27There you go.
12:28But I don't say anything.
12:29So what should it be?
12:30It should be the way I do it.
12:32Okay.
12:33Don't let me stop you.
12:36Perhaps if you did it more often, you could do it how you want.
12:41It was only sort of November 2023 that I had the first symptom.
12:47So there was a couple of moments when I had trouble swallowing.
12:50And I just thought, I just went, oh, I'm an old man, I'm getting indigestion.
12:56Then I had a night at a party where I sort of scoffed this food.
12:59And I ended up at the outside of the footpath, like, hanging on to a pole,
13:02and kind of vomiting, and like, whoa, that's bad.
13:05And I was like, well, that's odd.
13:06So I immediately rang my sister, who manages an endoscopy clinic, told her,
13:11and she was like, right, we're getting him down, we'll have a look.
13:13And we just all assumed that it was going to be nothing much.
13:17I wake up, and I can see this line of people all looking at me with a really concerned look.
13:21And it's like, you know, I'm lying, they go, that's not good.
13:27The gastroenterologist comes out and says, well, we found a tumour.
13:31Okay, I think it's just impossible to take in.
13:33Everybody would say this, you know, with these sort of diagnoses, it happens so quickly.
13:37You've gone from someone who doesn't have cancer to someone who has cancer.
13:41We had a meeting with the surgeon at St Vincent's,
13:43and he was telling us that he needed to take out his esophagus.
13:50When the data was presented at the multidisciplinary team meeting at St Vincent's,
13:55it was thought that he had advanced esophageal cancer.
13:59And then with the PET scan showing an increased uptake in one of the lymph nodes,
14:04that was very concerning.
14:07At that time, the preferred protocol involved having chemotherapy and radiotherapy prior to having surgery.
14:19There's nothing else that can be done for this.
14:21This is how it's being told to me at this point.
14:25So what we'll do then is we'll hoick your stomach up into your throat.
14:30No esophagus.
14:31Food will just, you know, drop into your stomach.
14:34It's a big operation.
14:35There are a lot of steps involved.
14:37And then the post-operative care is just as important.
14:41You know, the intensive care team looks after these patients.
14:46There's about a 30% chance of some form of complication occurring.
14:55He was really heading down the track of fairly radical surgery with significant illness attached to just the after effects
15:02of the surgery.
15:03Nutrition, swallowing and all those sorts of things.
15:05And it can be quite a sombre prognosis.
15:09It does come back in a significant percentage of people.
15:12So it was very hard to comfort him in that situation.
15:18So many of his main joys in life is, you know, food and cooking for people and playing the saxophone
15:24and talking.
15:25And, you know, that surgery had the potential to kind of take all of that away.
15:33So I think he was sort of looking at that.
15:35Like, I so don't want to do that.
15:38Afternoons with James Valentine on 702.
15:41So I finished the chemo and radiation and I was booked in for the surgery.
15:46And I've got to figure out how to tell the audience.
15:48You know, again, showman, what's the show going to be?
15:52Let me give you the mic.
15:54I was not surprised when he said he wanted to interview his surgeon and to broadcast that.
15:59Because here's a significant thing that James is going through.
16:03Yes, he would share that with his audience.
16:06But in his characteristic, quirky, whimsical way.
16:09Yes, so I'm sitting with Associate Professor Douglas Fenton-Lee.
16:13And probably not that many of your patients come and interview you beforehand.
16:17None.
16:19But I'm about to trust you with the most extreme thing anybody could do to another human being.
16:25Yeah, I know.
16:26I've often thought about that.
16:28There was a massive reaction to James's announcement.
16:32It so touched people, resonated with people.
16:36This is my last program for a while.
16:39I'm going to go off a bit of a holiday and then off I'll go and have surgery.
16:44So as a family, we decided that we'd just take a week in Bali and say goodbye to James's esophagus.
16:52That was pretty bad.
16:54That was a pretty bad holiday.
16:56Yeah.
16:56You lost your job.
16:57I lost my job the day we left.
16:59I got long COVID.
17:00Mum got really sick.
17:01Mum got COVID.
17:03You had barley belly.
17:04Dad had barley belly.
17:06And then two days into that trip, a friend of mine emailed and said,
17:11look, there might be an alternative treatment to what James is going through.
17:18When James declared on radio that he had esophageal cancer,
17:23James's esophagus became a topic of discussion amongst doctors in Sydney.
17:29I thought, you know, I should at least reach out to him
17:31and offer him the opportunity for me to review his situation.
17:35So there's four ulcers actually.
17:36Just water jet, water jet.
17:38I'm the director of gastrointestinal endoscopy at Westmead Hospital in Sydney.
17:42One of the main things that we do is treat early cancer and advanced pre-cancer.
17:49You see how far this tumour extends down into the stomach.
17:52Endoscopy is a very common medical procedure that is used to examine the digestive tract.
17:58And we can use tiny instruments to remove tumours.
18:02We're going to just peel this tumour away from the muscle.
18:06I thought there was a chance that James could avoid surgery depending on how it looked,
18:10but only 15 to 20 percent of all esophageal cancer is early cancer.
18:14And so most people are not suitable to be treated in this way.
18:22We sought out all the original imaging and of course performed our own endoscopy.
18:27And it was my view at that time that he had an early stage tumour that was suitable for endoscopic
18:34reception.
18:35And there was no evidence of spread beyond the esophagus at that point.
18:39So is this what Michael said is?
18:41Yeah.
18:42I was explaining the data to him and having listened to him on the radio,
18:46you know, like he's such a smart guy, I thought I'll just share all the medical literature.
18:50In our study, expert Barrett's endoscopists reliably detected and distinguished early EAC,
18:56T1A, T1B disease from HGD with a pool sensitivity of 89.1 percent.
19:02And then I said, did you read all the studies?
19:04He said, yeah, but he said, I'm not a doctor.
19:07And then he said to me, he said, what about if I give you music for playing jazz saxophone?
19:12Are you going to be able to understand that?
19:13All of these figures, as soon as he's all those figures, my brain just glazes over and I can't.
19:20I didn't really quite know what to make of it.
19:22I rang my surgeon, Doug Fendenley, and I said, well, what do you make of that?
19:29Well, I said to him, look, you know, if you want to explore it, then I think you should.
19:34Even though at the time I didn't think that James was suitable for endoscopic resection.
19:41A game telling you two different things.
19:44One was saying it was a tumour that had been there for a long time
19:48and that it, you know, had grown into the muscle wall
19:52and it was at a stage that was necessary to take it all out.
19:55And then the other person was saying, if it comes back.
20:00But that's not, that's not always the case.
20:02You know, the tumour can spread somewhere where it's very difficult to remove.
20:09I suppose I started to accept that I'm going to take on a level of risk here
20:14and that I'm changing the nature of the risk.
20:18I started to see the nature of the risk of the esophagectomy was this quality of life
20:23that was quite probably not going to be very good.
20:26The nature of the risk with Michael was that I was quite likely to have to deal with cancer again,
20:32possibly within a few years.
20:34But even if I only get a short period of time and cancer occurs, that feels better.
20:38I'll do that.
20:40We need at least 10 millimetre, yeah.
20:43There was no cancer going in deeply.
20:45Of course there was a lot of effect from the chemoradiotherapy.
20:48Don't tap in, just irrigate there, irrigate.
20:51When we received the pathology results for James's tumour, fortunately it was favourable.
20:56Fully removed, clear margins and no lymphatic invasion and so on.
21:01So very suitable to be followed by close surveillance.
21:07Right, let's go make some more warm running radio, shall we?
21:10While I was recovering, I'm just kind of like, I want to do the radio show, I want to play,
21:14I want to hang out with the family.
21:16You know, like that's all really I wanted to achieve.
21:23Oh yeah, yeah, I'm back.
21:26I am, I'm here.
21:28It means so much to be able to go back and do the show.
21:30Oh, I just felt a little surge of emotion there, I'm back.
21:33He is so grateful for every day.
21:35It's like, it's been a year of living gratefully.
21:38Yeah, it's very good afternoon and good to be hanging about with you on the radio today.
21:42So yeah, I think he was ecstatic just to have his life back and a second chance.
21:47I think it was, it was probably the happiest he's been maybe ever.
21:51Particularly with music and like the, he put on a tour.
21:55So I'm going to play it and just, you know, we start off with just a nice old jazz swing.
21:59And that was a really important thing for him and something that I think he'd always really wanted to do.
22:05What I'm trying to do when I play this thing or when I'm on the radio, it's all the same
22:08thing.
22:09I'm just trying to bring joy.
22:11And so this is a tune called When I'm Smiling.
22:29Pet suite.
22:31If you see pet suite on the sign, that's where we're going.
22:35Every three months I come here and I get a full body scan.
22:38This is to see if any cancer has escaped from the original tumour out into my body.
22:43Have you had four glasses of water this morning?
22:46Ah, no, I haven't.
22:47There's a term people use, scansiety.
22:50I'm finding as it goes on, I'm getting a little more anxious each time.
22:58Hopefully we will find out if things progress in any way that we're on it early.
23:05But there are no guarantees and we know that.
23:08I think it just makes, it makes you more aware of not taking any day for granted.
23:16My PET scans were perfectly clear, but then I started to get bad symptoms and that's not a good sign.
23:22What was revealed was I had cancer in my omentum, which is part of the stomach area.
23:28That was a pretty big shock.
23:30The scans were clear up until that point.
23:33Yeah.
23:33It's like it had grown midway through and it just sort of popped up.
23:37This is James' most recent PET scan.
23:40He was doing very well and we were out to more than 12 months.
23:44And it was devastating to find the results.
23:47Absolutely devastating because it was completely unexpected.
23:51I'll be all right.
23:52Yeah, I'll come see you.
23:53Bye, how are you?
23:54Good, how are you doing?
23:55So James presented with distant metastasis or distant spread of the disease.
24:01It's very likely that those cells that led to the recurrence had spread before any treatment had been offered.
24:11Coming to ABC Radio Sydney.
24:15Yet again, I've got to tell the audience what's happening to me.
24:19It's really hard.
24:22It's as hard as telling family and friends.
24:24Unfortunately, I have cancer again.
24:26It's come back and it's at this point.
24:29In my omentum, which is why we needed Norman, who will explain.
24:34The purpose of the omentum is not entirely certain,
24:36but it looks as if it's one of the immune policemen of the abdomen.
24:41Right.
24:41So, yes, it's doing a crap job as the immune policeman, may I just say.
24:45Yeah, that's right.
24:47I think I had in my mind, something would pop up and they'd just nip that off, you know.
24:51Well, it's not quite that.
24:53Thanks, Tom.
24:55Thank you, Norman.
24:56I mean, I was offered a choice between a full esophagectomy
24:58or this removal of tumour and then subsequent observation.
25:02And I chose the one that was a lesser invasion,
25:06the one that had a good chance that I would be perfectly fine.
25:11And both procedures really come with a warning that you might get cancer again.
25:15Look at that.
25:16You look beautiful.
25:17Oh, that's good.
25:18And, yes, it's gone up online and on social media.
25:22Is omentum trending yet?
25:23That's right.
25:24I think it will be, for sure.
25:26I think you've already gave me a lot of information.
25:28You know, I tried to understand it.
25:30Joanne and I tried to understand it.
25:32I think I basically said, well, you know what, I'm going to do this.
25:35And so, no, I don't have regrets about doing it.
25:38I decided to do it.
25:43So, following the diagnosis, I was immediately put onto chemo.
25:47And the diagnosis was harsh.
25:49Like, you know, the first oncologist I saw, he just went,
25:52stage four, terminal, inoperable, uncurable.
25:56You're now basically a palliative patient.
25:59I don't want to hear any of those words, let alone in the one sentence, you know.
26:09In a lot of ways, there's these strange upsides, of course,
26:11that come through these things as well.
26:13The family is fantastic.
26:15Me, Ruby, Roy and Joanne, great.
26:20My son Roy is a musician.
26:22The beautiful thing is, he said, do you want to come down and play?
26:26Do I?
26:27Like, you know, how moving is that?
26:40We had kind of a year where it was, like, every week we would perform together.
26:44And it was a very, like, beautiful, sacred little space of just, like,
26:48him kind of understanding me and me understanding him.
26:51And, yeah, it was very beautiful.
26:57You know, we are talking as much as we possibly can,
26:59as much as they want to, you know.
27:01Ask the questions. Let's talk about it.
27:03Let's talk about what it's going to be like afterwards.
27:05Let's talk about the fact that I'm going to die.
27:06Let's not shy away from that.
27:21When you're sort of faced with, you have this really strong foundation
27:25and then something's going to be taken out of that, it sort of changes your whole world.
27:30So, um, sorry.
27:36Yeah, then I think
27:40it's brought us a lot closer.
27:43We're just spending more time together.
27:46Like, I've just sort of spent Christmas with them and I've barely left their apartment.
27:52We just sort of sat on the couch watching movies, which is so, you know, not any of our usual
27:58vibes.
28:06I've spent the last seven or eight months going through various styles of chemo.
28:13I can have three or four days of great fatigue and then I'm sort of fine.
28:17The general path I'm on at the moment is I think I can stay on the chemo until it doesn't
28:21work
28:21and that could happen next week. It could happen in three months.
28:32A friend suggested to me, maybe you should do a living wake.
28:39And I went, oh, that sounds like fun.
28:43The wake's the best part of the funeral.
28:47There's often a great buzz in a wake.
28:49And what everybody says at wakes is, he would have loved this.
28:53And so the notion of a living wake is if you know that you're terminal,
28:57why not have that party beforehand?
28:59Why not invite everybody in and let's share the emotion.
29:03Tell me how great I am.
29:05Oh, yeah.
29:08Oh, yeah.
29:12Yeah, make an entrance, baby, I say.
29:20There was a lot of apprehension.
29:21I had a few calls from people.
29:23They're like, is this just going to be really disturbing?
29:25Like, am I just going to be upset all afternoon?
29:27Nick's a stare on drums.
29:30I think once we established what it was, the apprehension lifted.
29:35I want to hear from the people who fed us for the last six months.
29:38Give me a woo!
29:39Woo!
29:39Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!
29:40Yes, thank you very much.
29:42It's incredibly brave, the way that he's facing this whole period.
29:46Yeah, so open and so vulnerable, but coming at it with such joy as well.
29:50Who's texting me? Woo!
29:53Very early on, he came across the concept of like, well, what is a good death?
29:58And how do you have a good death?
30:00I started to think about the way in which death was so often a time of bitterness,
30:05of anger, of regret, of shaking your fist at the universe or your god,
30:09and going, you know, what the hell's going on here? And I said, well, I don't want that.
30:13In a sense, it didn't feel brave. It just sort of felt like him.
30:16Like, it just felt like, yeah, he knows how to do this.
30:18I want my last days to be full of joy and happiness and laughter and jokes and humour
30:23and all the things I've loved through life.
30:25He's, you know, still a performer and a man who likes to be on stage.
30:28He lives for applause, so...
30:30He's very self-obsessed.
30:32He's not unhappy to be told that he's amazing.
30:35Yeah, he needs to hear it a bunch right now.
30:38Come up and remind me of some stupid thing we did together.
30:42Come up and remind me of some adventure.
30:44This is the gift that I can take with me into these next months,
30:48which are going to be tough.
30:49This is nourishment for my soul, you know, that I'm getting from you today.
30:54So, thank you.
30:55CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
31:09As much as you do through this process, which is incredibly confronting,
31:11one thing we decided to do was look at voluntary assisted dying, euthanasia.
31:17And that sort of took no thought at all.
31:19There is a great relief in knowing that should things get too bad, you can stop it.
31:24And that's as much for Joanne and the kids as anybody, as it is for me, really.
31:31It's very reassuring to know that it's there, to cut out the suffering at the very end.
31:39That's a very civilised kind of process to have.
31:46Of course there's been grief, of course there's been sadness,
31:48of course there's been, you know, I've been overwhelmed by despair at various points.
31:54But how do you come through that to then be largely living in a way that is,
32:01in a way that's more accepting?
32:03I really hate the Dylan Thomas poem,
32:05Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.
32:07How about you go gentle into that good night?
32:10What's with the rage? What's with the anger?
32:17There's friends to be with, there's family to be with, there's life to be experienced.
32:22There's a sky to contemplate, there's beauty to be seen.
32:26Don't start mourning before you have to.
32:32In some ways I'm lucky in that I have lived a good life, you know,
32:35like in the sense that I've done lots of things I wanted to do, I've been happy.
32:39You know, I've got a wife I love, I've got children I love.
32:44You know, you understand that we all die.
32:47We all die.
32:49I just happen to know the might's coming.
33:36I just happen to know the time.
33:38Let's just stop it.
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