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Australian Story - Season 31 Episode 11 - 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
01:03the fact that 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
01:16me getting my first saxophone. Like, they're all still there, playing away now. And there's
01:22still this 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, we usually
01:37start with a little health update, don't we? Last year I had esophageal cancer. Um, it's a,
01:45you know, with a pretty heavy diagnosis. And the original proposed treatment was, we chop it out.
01:51Oh, the tumour? Nope. The esophagus. We're gonna take the whole thing out and chuck it away.
01:57It was terrifying when he got the diagnosis. I thought, well, if they're gonna snip out his esophagus
02:05and stitch him up, what does that mean for his playing? And I thought that would be a heartbreak for
02:12it.
02:13But then, as is my want, I tended to talk about it. And so I went on air, I spoke
02:20about it.
02:21Uh, well, this is a bit of a strange moment for me and probably for you. I've got to go
02:26off and deal with something.
02:28And the thing I've got to go off and deal with is cancer.
02:32It never occurred to us, as I think it wouldn't occur to many people, to think there's an alternative treatment.
02:38I heard from a group of doctors in Westmead Hospital who came back to me and said, eh, we don't
02:44do that.
02:44We'll just take the tumour out, we'll have a look at you. I said, esophagus? You can keep it.
02:50When he got the option to not do it or to try something else, he was pretty ecstatic and pretty
02:56like, 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.
03:10It's an unbelievable joy.
03:26So this morning you're speaking in Parkside Ballroom 1 which is just over there.
03:30Okay then, alright, 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.
03:45I 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 and then
03:56get a response.
03:58What do you do if you don't have that? How do you deal with this stuff?
04:01Whoa! What do you think? Esophagus or Great Barrier Reef?
04:06Woo! 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.
04:17And how do you make the right choice?
04:19Is it okay if we show some slides of your resection?
04:22Yeah, yeah.
04:23We invited James because it was a great opportunity to get the patient's perspective from someone who's very good at
04:29communicating and to learn that we can do better.
04:33So many of you will recognise James. He's a beloved Australian radio presenter and musician. He's going to talk today
04:40with 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 with the rectum in my life.
04:48Riveting, riveting.
04:50What was the thing that made you select one approach versus the other?
04:54I 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.
05:17I'm here to go and visit my mother and say hi, which I do every few months. She's 98.
05:21She became a broadcaster when she was 18, in 1945, straight after the war.
05:28It is this 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.
05:45So we've dug up your past, OK?
05:46Good heavens.
05:47We've found everything.
05:48She was a very formal kind of announcer.
05:50She was a champion of elocution.
05:52But she also starts submitting stuff to the ABC and ends up a stringer for Australia All Over,
05:58which is Macca's program now.
05:59This is the judge's report for you.
06:02Oh.
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.
06:17Gosh, where did I get it from?
06:20There was no other musicality in the family.
06:23I 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.
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.
06:55And I just went, oh, that's interesting.
06:57By the time I finished high school, I could study music, you know, is that alright?
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.
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.
07:32What 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, 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 full-time
07:51with 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.
08:23It just sort of, it took off.
08:24So it was a strange kind of thing.
08:26I didn't mean it to happen.
08:29I wasn't really part of the band as such.
08:31They 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 sax solos, and then off we go on the road.
08:43It was fantastic, it was very fun.
08:49The 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.
08:57James' addition to that band, we were worried it was going to ruin the band,
09:01but it really helped 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, and I'm not enjoying this.
09:23I'd also met my wife by this point, and our wife Joanne,
09:26and was like, well, and she's looking at me like,
09:28are you going to be this, you know, idiot rock guy forever?
09:31James Valentine from The Models and Friends.
09:33Who are your friends, James?
09:34This is Wayne and this is Joanne.
09:35It was just impossible to have a regular relationship,
09:38so he decided that he would come back
09:42and 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,
09:57and it didn't fit his personality.
10:00I got a job on Channel 10 as the entertainment reporter.
10:03It was a bit like being on the rock tour.
10:05I was drifting into an area I didn't necessarily want to be in.
10:08It's coming up to 3 o'clock here on Canberra's 2CN.
10:11Then he realised radio's where it's at,
10:13because radio is just instant.
10:17He could have this connection with the audience,
10:19but 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,
10:28ah, yes, 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
10:42about 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,
10:52which is very, very funny.
10:53And he allows that to come through,
10:55and 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,
11:06just 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.
11:12I just swan in.
11:14Jen and Hannah have done it all, and I go,
11:16sure, and on we go.
11:17And so it means that you've got an audience
11:20that'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
11:29at 1.30 today, the done thing.
11:31It took me a year or two for me to feel confident enough
11:33to go, you know what, I'm just going to go for
11:35the 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,
11:46and it wasn't until I threw all that out that I started to go,
11:51right, here's a stupid segment.
11:53We have, this is what I live with,
11:55and that's when you call about the annoying thing
11:58that your partner does.
11:59Things are getting worse.
12:00Every night my husband sits on a special chair in the dark
12:04and the possum jumps on his lap
12:06and he grooms her with a special comb.
12:09James listens to what the guest is saying
12:13and responds in that moment.
12:14He's not scared of improvising.
12:18I do a thing on the radio,
12:19this is what I live with,
12:20which is about couples,
12:21and the standard thing that no couple can agree on
12:23is how to snatch a dishwasher.
12:25I really disagree with the way you snatch it.
12:28But I don't say anything.
12:29So what should it be?
12:30It should be the way I do it.
12:32Okay.
12:34Don't let me stop you.
12:35Well, clearly.
12:36Perhaps if you did it more often,
12:38you could do it how you want.
12:41It was only sort of November 2023
12:45that I had the first symptom.
12:47So there was a couple of moments
12:48when I had trouble swallowing
12:50and I just thought,
12:51I just went,
12:52oh, I'm an old man,
12:53I'm getting indigestion.
12:56Then I had a night at a party
12:57where I sort of scoffed this food.
12:59I ended up at the outside of the footpath,
13:01like hanging on to a pole
13:02and kind of vomiting
13:03and like, whoa, that's bad.
13:05I was like, well, that's odd.
13:06So I immediately rang my sister
13:08who manages an endoscopy clinic,
13:10told her and she was like,
13:11right, we're getting him down,
13:13we'll have a look.
13:14And we just all assumed
13:15that it was going to be nothing much.
13:17I wake up and I can see this line of people
13:19all looking at me
13:20with a really concerned look.
13:21And it's like, you know, I'm lying,
13:23they go, that's not good.
13:27The gastroenterologist comes over and says,
13:29well, we found a tumour.
13:31Okay, I think it's just impossible to take in.
13:33Everybody would say this, you know,
13:35with these sort of diagnoses
13:36that happen so quickly,
13:37you've gone from someone
13:38who doesn't have cancer
13:39to someone who has cancer.
13:41We had a meeting with the surgeon
13:42at St Vincent's
13:43and he was telling us that
13:45he needed to take out his esophagus.
13:50When the data was presented
13:52at the multidisciplinary team meeting
13:54at St Vincent's,
13:55it was thought that he had advanced esophageal cancer
13:58and then with the PET scan showing
14:00an increased uptake in one of the lymph nodes,
14:04that was very concerning.
14:07At that time, the preferred protocol involved
14:11having chemotherapy and radiotherapy
14:13prior 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
14:26is 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.
14:36There are a lot of steps involved.
14:37And then the post-operative care is just as important.
14:42You know, the intensive care team
14:43looks after these patients.
14:47There's about a 30% chance
14:49of some form of complication occurring.
14:55He was really heading down the track
14:57of fairly radical surgery
14:58with significant illness
15:00attached to just the after effects of the surgery.
15:03Nutrition, swallowing, and all those sorts of things.
15:06And it can be quite a sombre prognosis.
15:09It does come back
15:10in 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
15:20is, you know, food and cooking for people
15:22and playing the saxophone and talking.
15:25And, you know, that surgery had the potential
15:29to kind of take all of that away.
15:33So I think he was sort of looking at that.
15:36Like, I so don't want to do that.
15:38Afternoons with James Valentine on 702.
15:41So I finished the chemo and radiation
15:43and 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 some mic.
15:54I was not surprised when he said
15:55he 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
16:15come and interview you beforehand.
16:17None.
16:19But I'm about to trust you with the most extreme thing
16:22anybody could do to another human being.
16:25Yeah, I know.
16:26It's... I've often thought about that.
16:28There was a massive reaction to James's announcement.
16:32It so touched people, resonated with people.
16:37This is my last program for a while.
16:38I'm going to go off a bit of a holiday.
16:40And then off I'll go and have surgery.
16:44So as a family, we decided that we'd just take a week in Bali
16:48and say goodbye to James's esophagus.
16:52That was pretty bad.
16:54That was a pretty bad holiday.
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 Bali belly.
17:04Dad had Bali belly.
17:05Yeah.
17:06And then two days into that trip,
17:08a friend of mine emailed and said,
17:11look, there might be an alternative treatment
17:13to 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
17:26amongst doctors in Sydney.
17:29I thought, you know, I should at least reach out to him
17:32and offer him the opportunity for me to review his situation.
17:35So there's four ulcers actually.
17:37Just water jet.
17:38Water jet.
17:38I'm the director of gastrointestinal endoscopy
17:40at Westmead Hospital in Sydney.
17:42One of the main things that we do is treat early cancer
17:46and advanced pre-cancer.
17:49You see how far this tumour extends down into the stomach.
17:53Endoscopy is a very common medical procedure
17:55that 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
18:09depending on how it looked.
18:10But only 15 to 20% of all esophageal cancer is early cancer.
18:15And so most people are not suitable to be treated in this way.
18:22We sought out all the original imaging
18:25and of course performed our own endoscopy.
18:27And it was my view at that time
18:29that he had an early stage tumour
18:32that was suitable for endoscopic resection.
18:35And there was no evidence of spread
18:37beyond the esophagus at that point.
18:39So is this what Michael said is?
18:41Yeah.
18:42I was explaining the data to him
18:44and having listened to him on the radio,
18:46you know, he's such a smart guy,
18:48I 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
18:58from HGD with a pooled sensitivity of 89.1%.
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,
19:08what about if I give you music for playing jazz saxophone?
19:12Are you going to be able to understand that?
19:14All of these figures, as soon as there's all those figures,
19:16I just, my brain just glazes over and I can't.
19:19Yeah.
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.
19:35Even though at the time I didn't think that James was suitable for endoscopic resection.
19:41The game telling you two different things.
19:44One was saying it was a tumour that had been there for a long time and that had, you know,
19:50had grown into the muscle wall and it was at a stage that was necessary to take it all out.
19:56And then the other person was saying, if it comes back.
20:00But that's not, that's not always the case.
20:03You 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,
20:15that 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.
20:39I'll do that.
20:40Oh, we 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.
20:49Don't tap in, just irrigate there, irrigate.
20:51Now, when we received the pathology results for James's tumour,
20:54unfortunately it was favourable, fully removed, clear margins,
20:59and 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,
21:13I want to do the radio show, I want to play, I want to hang out with the family.
21:16You know, like, that's all really I wanted to achieve.
21:23Oh, yeah. Yeah.
21:25I'm back.
21:26I am. I'm here.
21:28It means so much to be able to go back and do the show.
21:31Oh, 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, start off with just a nice old jazz swinger.
21:59And that was a really important thing for him.
22:02And 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,
22:08it's all the same thing.
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.
22:44Have you had four glasses of water this morning?
22:47No, I haven't.
22:48There'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.
23:20And that's not a good sign.
23:22What was revealed was I had cancer in my momentum, 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.
23:38This is James' most recent PET scan.
23:40And he was doing very well and we're out to more than 12 months.
23:44And it was devastating to find the results.
23:47Absolutely devastating because it was completely unexpected.
23:50I'll be alright.
23:52Yeah.
23:52I'll come see you.
23:53Bye.
23:53How are you?
23:55How are you doing?
23:55Sir James presented with distant metastasis or distant spread of the disease.
24:02It's very likely that those cells that led to the recurrence had spread before any treatment had been offered.
24:12Come into ABC Radio Sydney.
24:15Yet again, I've got to tell the audience what's happening to me.
24:18It's really hard.
24:21It's like it's as hard as telling family and friends.
24:25Unfortunately, I have cancer again.
24:27It's come back and it's at this point.
24:30In my omentum, which is why we needed Norman who will explain.
24:34The purpose of the omentum is not entirely certain, but it looks as if it's one of the immune policemen
24:40of the abdomen.
24:41Right.
24:41Yes, it's doing a crap job as the immune policeman, may I just say.
24:45Yeah, that's right.
24:46I 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 or this removal of tumour and then subsequent observation.
25:02And I chose the one that was a lesser invasion, the one that had a good chance that I would
25:09be perfectly fine.
25:11And both procedures really come with a warning that you might get cancer again.
25:15Look at that, you look beautiful.
25:17Oh, that's good.
25:18Yeah.
25:19And it's gone up online and on social media.
25:22Yeah.
25:22Is omentum trending yet?
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, you know what, I'm going to do this.
25:36And so, no, I don't have regrets about doing it.
25:39I decided to do it.
25:44So, following the diagnosis, I was immediately put on to chemo.
25:47And the diagnosis was harsh.
25:49Like, you know, the first oncologist I saw, he just went, stage 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, that come through these things as well.
26:13The family is fantastic.
26:15Me, Ruby, Roy and Joanne.
26:17Great.
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, him kind of understanding me and me
26:50understanding him.
26:51And, yeah, it was very beautiful.
26:57You know, we are talking as much as we possibly can, as much as they want to.
27:01You know, ask the questions.
27:02Let'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.
27:07Let's not shy away from that.
27:21When you're sort of faced with, you have this really strong foundation and then something's going to be taken out
27:27of that, it sort of changes your whole world.
27:30So, sorry, yeah, then I think it'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 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 and 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 and what everybody says at wakes is, he would have loved this.
28:54And so the notion of a living wake is if you know that you're terminal, why not have that party
28:58beforehand?
28:59Why not invite everybody in and let's share the emotion?
29:03Tell me how great I am.
29:05Oh, yeah.
29:10Oh, yeah.
29:12Yeah.
29:13Make an entrance, baby, I say.
29:20There was a lot of apprehension.
29:21I had a few calls from people who were like, is this just going to be really disturbing?
29:25Like, am I just going to be upset all afternoon?
29:27It'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 word.
29:40Yes.
29:41Thank you very much.
29:42It's incredibly brave the way that he's facing this whole period.
29:46Yeah.
29:46So open and so vulnerable, but coming at it with such joy as well.
29:50Who's texting me?
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, of
30:05anger, of regret, of shaking your fist at the universe or your God and going, you
30:09know, what the hell's going on here?
30:11And I said, well, I don't want that.
30:13In a sense, it didn't feel brave.
30:14It 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.
30:36He 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 a gift that I can take with me into these next months, which 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.
31:09As much as you do through this process, which is incredibly confronting,
31:12and one 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 your, you know, for Joanne and the kids as anybody,
31:28as 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, of course there's been, you know,
31:50I'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, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.
32:08How about you go gentle into that good night?
32:10What's with the rage?
32:11What'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.
32:48We all die.
32:50I just happen to know that mine's coming.
32:58Yes, we all die.
33:05I do not.
33:14You can't be sacar.
33:16Now, how many of you do?
33:16I'm we all die.
33:17In my way, I'm not going to find some difference.
33:17I have been working with, I am not going to die for years.
33:18I'm not going to die, you know.
33:19I am going to die again for the time.
33:19I am not going to die, you know,
33:19I am not going to die again.
33:21And I am going to die again for you,
33:25and I am going to die again,
33:42Transcription by CastingWords
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