- 10 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:15Hello. In the 1980s, James Valentine was the gifted sax player of the Australian
00:22rock band Models 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 15-year-old me
01:16getting 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,
01:36we usually start with a little health update, don't we?
01:42Last year I had esophageal cancer. Um, it's a, you know, it was a pretty heavy diagnosis and the
01:48original proposed treatment was we chop it out. Oh, the tumour? Nope. The esophagus.
01:54We're going to take the whole thing out and chuck it away.
01:57It was terrifying when he got the diagnosis. I thought, well, if they're going to snip out
02:04his esophagus and stitch him up, what does that mean for his playing? And I thought that would be
02:11a heartbreak for it. But then, as is my want, I tended to talk about it. And so I went
02:19on air,
02:20I spoke about it. Uh, well, this is a bit of a strange moment for me and probably for you.
02:25I've got to go off and deal with something. And the thing I've got to go off and deal with
02:29is cancer. It never occurred to us, as I think it wouldn't occur to many people,
02:36to think there's an alternative treatment. I heard from a group of doctors in Westmeet
02:40Hospital who came back to me and said, eh, we don't do that. We'll just take the tumour out.
02:46We'll have a look at you. I said, esophagus, you didn't get it.
02:50When he got the option to not do it or to try something else,
02:54he 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. It'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
03:43get medical information. I think I've had a bit of this stuff down me at some point.
03:48I mean, here I am, somebody who's at the centre of information, who could talk about it publicly
03:55and then get a response. What do you do if you don't have that? How do you deal with this
04:01stuff?
04:01Whoa! What do you think? Esophagus or Great Barrier Reef?
04:07Woo! 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 show some slides of your resection?
04:22Yeah, yeah. We 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 heard so much discussion of the rectum in my life.
04:47Right, yeah. 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.
05:01Yeah, yeah.
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,
05:25straight after 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?
05:47Good heavens.
05:47We've found everything.
05:48She was a very formal kind of announcer. She was a champion at 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.
05:59This 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.
06:13What happened to that?
06:14I think I must have been born a little show-off.
06:16Yeah. Gosh, 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.
06:32I started playing music at school when they handed out the recorders.
06:35I went back the next week and I could play the tunes and they go, hmm, it's interesting.
06:40No one's ever done that before.
06:44I think once you start playing woodwind, then 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, if that's what you want to do, that's
07:08fine.
07:11I met James at the beginning of 1983. We 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. What I wanted to be was a great jazz player,
07:33but I also wanted to figure out how you earn money.
07:36Bad is good, 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. It was good money.
07:59I kind of fell into the models from that.
08:02And now, here's the big one, Barbados!
08:07James joins the models, and the first record he plays on, he plays a saxophone solo, and it's
08:13a very good saxophone solo, and the song shoots up the charts.
08:23It just sort of, it took off. So it was a strange kind of thing. I didn't mean it to
08:27happen.
08:28I wasn't really part of the band as such. They were making all the band-type decisions.
08:36I was hanging around, I'd play a lot of table tennis, I got very good at table tennis,
08:39and then I'd go and do some saxolas, and then off we go on the road. It was fantastic. It
08:44was very fun.
08:48The next single they put out is Out of Mind, Out of Sight, and it's smothered in horns,
08:53and it goes straight to number one. James' addition to that band, we were worried it was going to ruin
09:00the band, but it really helped make the band. We then toured the US for about six or eight months.
09:09We were exhausted, and tours at that point didn't stop.
09:16I don't know that I've got a brain left at this point. I think I've stewed it,
09:21and I'm not enjoying this. I'd also met my wife by this point,
09:24and now wife Joanne. I was like, well, and she's looking at me like, are you going to be this,
09:29you know, idiot rock guy forever? James Valentine from the Models and Friends. Who are your friends,
09:33James? Oh, this is Wayne, and this is Joanne. It was just impossible to have a regular relationship,
09:38so he decided that he would come back and audition for the afternoon show. Everyone in Sydney went for
09:46the audition, and he ended up getting it. Hi, welcome to the afternoon show. When afternoon
09:54finished, 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. It was a bit like me on the rock
10:04tours.
10:05I was drifting into an area I didn't necessarily want to be in. It's coming up to three o'clock
10:09here
10:09on Canberra's 2C Inn. Then he realised radio's where it's at, because radio is just instant.
10:16He could have this connection with the audience, but without all the fuss of TV.
10:23It's time for a VET Talkback with Mike Haywood. That very first shift I did,
10:26my memory is that I just went, ah, yes, I love this. This is fantastic. Much of this is the
10:33product
10:33of my mother, you know, like I watched her doing it. I 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.
10:43James just talks to the audience. He talks one-on-one, which is textbook broadcasting. And there's like
10:50a madness to James as well, which is very, very funny. And he allows that to come through. And he's
10:56unembarrassed by it.
10:58James, welcome to ABC Radio Sydney. This is where it all happens. I like to have my own image
11:04everywhere, everywhere I go, just to remind myself who I am.
11:08And I've been doing this shift for nearly three decades. See, that's how easy it is doing radio.
11:12I just, I just swan in. Janet and Hannah have done it all. And I go, sure. And on we
11:17go.
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. They've told me everything that's happened to
11:26there. We'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,
11:34I'm just going 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. The best part about it is that they're extensions.
11:43I still felt I had to interview the police commissioner or something. And it wasn't until I threw all
11:49that 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
11:58partner does. Things 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. And the standard
12:22thing that no couple can agree on is how to stack your dishwasher. I really disagree with the way
12:27you stack it. But I don't say anything. So what should it be? It should be the way I do
12:32it. Okay.
12:33Don't let me stop you. Perhaps 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. So there was a couple of moments
12:48when I had trouble swallowing and 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. I ended up at the
13:00outside of the
13:00footpath like hanging on to a pole and kind of vomiting and like, whoa, that's bad.
13:05And I was like, well, that's odd. So I immediately rang my sister who manages an endoscopy clinic,
13:10told her and 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
13:21it's like, you know, I'm lying there going, that's not good. The gastroenterologist comes out and says,
13:29well, we found a tumour. Okay. I think it's just impossible to take in. Everybody would say this,
13:35you know, with these sort of diagnoses, it happens so quickly. You've gone from someone who doesn't
13:39have cancer to someone who has cancer. We 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. And then with the PET scan showing an
14:01increased uptake in one of the lymph nodes, that 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. This is how it's being
14:22told to me at this point. So what we'll do then is we'll hoick your stomach up into your
14:28throat. No esophagus. Food will just drop into your stomach. It's a big operation. There are a lot of
14:36steps involved. And then the post-operative care is just as important. You know, the intensive care
14:43team looks after these patients. There'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
15:00illness attached to just the after effects of the surgery. Nutrition, swallowing and all those sorts of
15:05things. And it can be quite a sombre prognosis. It does come back in a significant percentage of
15:12people. So 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. And, 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 like, I so don't want to do that.
15:41So I finished the chemo and radiation, and I was booked in for the surgery. And I've got to figure
15:47out how to tell the audience. You know, again, showman, what's the show going to be?
15:52Let me give you the mic. I was not surprised when he said he wanted to interview his surgeon
15:57and to broadcast that. Because here's a significant thing that James is going through. Yes, he would
16:04share that with his audience. But in his characteristic, quirky, whimsical way.
16:09Yes. So I'm sitting with Associate Professor Douglas Fenton-Lee. And probably not that many
16:15of your patients come and interview you beforehand. None. But I'm about to trust you with the most
16:21extreme thing anybody could do to another human being. Yeah, I know. I've often thought about that.
16:28There was a massive reaction to James's announcement. It so touched people, resonated with people.
16:36This is my last program for a while. Going to go off a bit of a holiday. And then off
16:41I'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. That was a pretty bad holiday. You lost your job. I lost my job the day
16:58we left.
16:59I got long COVID. Mum got really sick. Mum got COVID. You had barley belly. Dad had barley belly.
17:06And then two days into that trip, a friend of mine emailed and said, look,
17:11there 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 and offer him the opportunity for me to
17:33review his situation.
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
18:34resection. And 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, you know,
18:47like he's such a smart guy. I thought, I'll just share all the medical literature.
18:50In our study, expert Barrett's endoscopists
18:54reliably detected and distinguished early EAC T1A T1B disease from HGD,
18:59with 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 there's all those figures,
19:16my 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?
19:28Well, 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,
19:41we didn't think that he had an early esophageal cancer.
19:46You know, the thickness and the length of the tumour was quite significant.
19:50The fact that he had lymph nodes enlarged
19:55indicated that he had a good chance of having lymph node involvement.
19:59This is two absolute medical experts, two people who are top of their game,
20:04telling you two different things.
20:06One was saying it was a tumour that had been there for a long time
20:10and that it, you know, had grown into the muscle wall
20:14and it was at a stage that was necessary to take it all out.
20:17And then the other person was saying, I don't think it's been there that long.
20:22It's not that big. I've done bigger. You know, it's fine. We can do this procedure.
20:27I got it down to, I can do Michael's first.
20:29If there's problems with my esophagus, I can go back to Doug.
20:32You know, once I told Doug, he went, well, yes, you can always come back to me.
20:36With some provisos.
20:37One of the things that James said to me was that,
20:40oh, well, we can always just operate if it comes back.
20:43But that's not, that's not always the case.
20:46You know, the tumour can spread somewhere where it's very difficult to remove.
20:53I suppose I started to accept that I'm going to take on a level of risk here,
20:58that I'm changing the nature of the risk.
21:01I started to see the nature of the risk of the esophagectomy
21:04was this quality of life that was quite probably not going to be very good.
21:10The nature of the risk with Michael
21:13was that I was quite likely to have to deal with cancer again,
21:16possibly within a few years.
21:17But even if I only get a short period of time and cancer occurs,
21:20that feels better. I'll do that.
21:24We need at least 10 millimetre, yeah.
21:26There was no cancer going in deeply.
21:29Of course, there was a lot of effect from the chemoradiotherapy.
21:32Don't tap in, just irrigate there, irrigate.
21:35Now, when we received the pathology results for James's tumour,
21:38fortunately, it was favourable, fully removed, clear margins,
21:43and no lymphatic invasion and so on.
21:45So very suitable to be followed by close surveillance.
21:51Right, let's go make some more warm running radio, shall we?
21:54While I was recovering, I'm just kind of like, I want to do the radio show,
21:57I want to play, I want to hang out with the family.
21:59You know, like, that's all really I wanted to achieve.
22:06Ah, yeah, yeah. Ah, I'm back.
22:09I am. I'm here.
22:11It means so much to be able to go back and do the show.
22:14Ah, I just felt a little surge of emotion there. I'm back.
22:17He is so grateful for every day.
22:19It's like it's been a year of living gratefully.
22:21Yeah, it's very good afternoon.
22:23Good to be hanging about with you on the radio today.
22:25So, yeah, I think he was ecstatic just to have his life back and a second chance.
22:30I think it was, it was probably the happiest he's been maybe ever.
22:35Particularly with music and like the, he put on a tour.
22:39So I'm going to play it and just, you know,
22:40we start off with just a nice old jazz swinger.
22:43And that was a really important thing for him
22:45and something that I think he'd always really wanted to do.
22:48Or what I'm trying to do when I play this thing or when I'm on the radio,
22:51it's all the same thing. I'm just trying to bring joy.
22:54And so this is a tune called When I'm Smiling.
23:12Pet suite.
23:15If you see pet suite on the sign, that's where we're going.
23:18Every three months, I come here and I get a full body scan.
23:22This is to see if any cancer has escaped from the original tumour out into my body.
23:27Have you had four glasses of water this morning?
23:30Ah, no, I haven't.
23:31There's a term people use, scansiety.
23:34I'm finding as it goes on, I'm getting a little more anxious each time.
23:42Hopefully we will find out if things progress in any way that we're on it early.
23:48But there are no guarantees and we know that.
23:52I think it just makes, it makes you more aware of not taking any day for granted.
23:59My PET scans were perfectly clear, but then I started to get bad symptoms and that's not a good sign.
24:06What was revealed was I had cancer in my omentum, which is part of the stomach area.
24:12That was a pretty big shock.
24:14The scans were clear up until that point.
24:17Yeah.
24:17It's like it had grown midway through and it just sort of popped up.
24:21This is James' most recent PET scan.
24:23He was doing very well and we're out to more than 12 months.
24:28And it was devastating to find the results.
24:31Absolutely devastating because it was completely unexpected.
24:34I'll be alright.
24:35Yeah, I'll come see you.
24:36Bye, how are you?
24:39So James presented with distant metastasis or distant spread of the disease.
24:45It's very likely that those cells that led to the recurrence had spread
24:50before any treatment had been offered.
24:55Coming to ABC Radio Sydney.
24:59Yet again, I've got to tell the audience what's happening to me.
25:02That's, it's really hard.
25:04It's like, it's a, it's as hard as telling family and friends.
25:08Unfortunately, I have cancer again.
25:10It's, it's come back and it's at this point in my omentum,
25:15which is why we needed Norman, who will explain.
25:17The purpose of the omentum is not entirely certain,
25:20but it looks as if it's one of the immune policemen of the abdomen.
25:24Right.
25:25So, yes, it's doing a crap job as the immune policeman, may I just say.
25:29Yeah, the, yeah, that's right.
25:30I think I had in my mind, something would pop up and they'd just nip that off, you know.
25:35Well, it's not quite that.
25:37Thanks, Tom.
25:39Thank you, Norman.
25:40I mean, I was offered a choice between a full esophagectomy or this removal of tumour
25:43and then subsequent observation.
25:45And I chose the one that was a lesser invasion, the one that had a good chance that I would
25:53be perfectly fine.
25:55And both procedures really come with a warning that you might get cancer again.
25:59Look at that.
25:59You look beautiful.
26:01Oh, that's good.
26:02And, yes, it's gone up online and on social media.
26:06Is omentum trending yet?
26:07I think it will be, for sure.
26:10I think you've already gave me a lot of information.
26:12You know, I tried to understand it.
26:13Joanne and I tried to understand it.
26:15I think I basically said, well, you know what, I'm going to do this.
26:19And so, no, I don't have regrets about doing it.
26:22I decided to do it.
26:27So, following the diagnosis, I was immediately put onto chemo.
26:31And the diagnosis was harsh.
26:32Like, you know, the first oncologist I saw just went, stage four, terminal, inoperable,
26:39uncurable, you're now basically a palliative patient.
26:42I don't want to hear any of those words, let alone in the one sentence, you know.
26:52In a lot of ways, there's these strange upsides, of course, that come through these things as well.
26:56The family is fantastic.
26:58Me, Ruby, Roy and Joanne, great.
27:03My son, Roy, is a musician.
27:05The beautiful thing is, he said, do you want to come down and play?
27:09Do I?
27:11Like, you know, how moving is that?
27:23We had kind of a year where it was, like, every week we would perform together.
27:28And it was a very, like, beautiful, sacred little space of just, like, him kind of understanding me
27:33and me understanding him.
27:34And, yeah, it was very beautiful.
27:40You know, we are talking as much as we possibly can, as much as they want to.
27:44You know, ask the questions.
27:45Let's talk about it.
27:46Let's talk about what it's going to be like afterwards.
27:48Let's talk about the fact that I'm going to die.
27:50Let's not shy away from that.
28:04When you're sort of faced with, you have this really strong foundation,
28:08and then something's going to be taken out of that.
28:11It sort of changes your whole world.
28:13So, um, sorry.
28:20Yeah, then I think
28:24it's brought us a lot closer.
28:27We're just spending more time together.
28:29Like, I've just sort of spent Christmas with them
28:33and I barely left the, like, left their apartment.
28:35We just sort of sat on the couch watching movies,
28:37which is so, you know, not any of our usual vibes.
28:50I've spent the last seven or eight months
28:52going through various styles of chemo.
28:57I can have three or four days of great fatigue
28:59and then I'm sort of fine.
29:00The general path I'm on at the moment is
29:03I think I can stay on the chemo until it doesn't work
29:05and that could happen next week.
29:07It could happen in three months.
29:16A friend suggested to me,
29:18maybe you should do a living wake.
29:22And I went, oh, that sounds like fun.
29:26The wake's the best part of the funeral.
29:31There's often a great buzz in a wake.
29:33And what everybody says at wakes is,
29:36he would have loved this.
29:37And so the notion of a living wake is,
29:39if you know that you're terminal,
29:41why not have that party beforehand?
29:43Why not invite everybody in and let's share the emotion.
29:46Tell me how great I am.
29:49Oh, yeah.
29:52Oh, yeah.
29:55Yeah. Make an entrance, baby, I say.
30:03There was a lot of apprehension.
30:05I had a few calls from people who were like,
30:07is this just going to be really disturbing?
30:09Like, am I just going to be upset all afternoon?
30:11It's a stare on drums.
30:13I think once we established what it was,
30:17the apprehension lifted.
30:18I want to hear from the people who fed us for the last six months.
30:21Give me a woo!
30:22Woo!
30:23Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo!
30:24Yes! Thank you very much.
30:25It's incredibly brave the way that he's facing this whole period.
30:29Yeah, so open and so vulnerable,
30:32but coming at it with such joy as well.
30:33Who's texting me? Woo!
30:37Very early on, he came across the concept of like,
30:40well, what is a good death?
30:42And how do you have a good death?
30:44I started to think about the way in which death was so often a time of
30:48bitterness, of anger, of regret, of shaking your fist at the universe or your God,
30:52and going, you know, what the hell's going on here?
30:54And I thought, well, I want that.
30:56In a sense, it didn't feel brave.
30:58It just sort of felt like him.
30:59Like, it just felt like, yeah, he knows how to do this.
31:01I want my last days to be full of joy and happiness and laughter and jokes and humor
31:06and all the things I've loved through life.
31:09He's, you know, still a performer and a man who likes to be on stage.
31:12He lives for applause, so...
31:14He's very self-obsessed.
31:16He's not unhappy to be told that he's amazing.
31:18Yeah, he needs to hear it a bunch right now.
31:22Come up and remind me of some stupid thing we did together.
31:25Come up and remind me of some adventure.
31:27This is the gift that I can take with me into these next months,
31:32which are going to be tough.
31:33This is nourishment for my soul, you know, that I'm getting from you today.
31:37So, thank you.
31:52There's much to do through this process, which is incredibly confronting,
31:55and one thing we decided to do was look at voluntary assisted dying, euthanasia.
32:00And that sort of took no thought at all.
32:02There is a great relief in knowing that should things get too bad, you can stop it.
32:07And that's as much for your, you know, for Joanne and the kids as anybody,
32:12as it is for me, really.
32:14It's very reassuring to know that it's there,
32:17to cut out the suffering at the very end.
32:22That's a very civilised kind of process to have.
32:30Of course there's been grief, of course there's been sadness,
32:32of course there's been, you know, I've been overwhelmed by despair at various points.
32:38But how do you come through that to then be largely living in a way that is,
32:45in a way that's more accepting?
32:47I really hate the Dylan Thomas poem, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.
32:51How about you go gentle into that good night?
32:53What's with the rage? What's with the anger?
33:00There's friends to be with, there's family to be with, there's life to be experienced.
33:06There's a sky to contemplate, there's beauty to be seen.
33:10Don't start mourning before you have to.
33:16In some ways I'm lucky in that I have lived a good life, you know,
33:18like in the sense that I've done lots of things I wanted to do, I've been happy.
33:23You know, I've got a wife I love, I've got children I love.
33:28You know, you understand that we all die.
33:31We all die.
33:32we all die.
33:33I just happen to know the might's coming.
Comments