SIR Cliff Richard has made a pact with one of his sisters to help end their lives early if either develops Alzheimer’s.
The singer, 71, suggested he’d discussed euthanasia with the unnamed sibling after watching their mother Dorothy suffer with the disease for ten years.
Speaking in a BBC radio interview, he revealed: “I said, look if this happens to me, I’ll do the same for you if you’ll do it for me, don’t let it go on too long. And just make sure I’m looked after because I don’t want to be a burden on anybody else.”
He went on: “If it happened when I was 90, 20 years from now, they might well have allowed euthanasia or something like that.
“Dementia does not take your life – but it removes it away from you. You don’t have a life. It just stops you living.”
Sir Cliff’s mother died in 2007 at the age of 87. He has three sisters Donna, 68, Jacqui, 63, and Joan, 61, but declined to reveal with whom the pact had been made.
Speaking of the anguish he went through as his mother’s health declined, he told Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour: “It was a gradual change to start with but then it steamrollered at the very end. In the last three or four years she came to a point where she really didn’t know who I was.
“If she referred to me, she’d call me ‘that Cliff Richard’ and she’d be looking at me. She had to be looked after like a baby. She stopped being the woman we knew.
“And all we could do was care for her because we could still see this figure that was our mum.”
Sir Cliff is a devout Christian which makes his remarks about euthanasia particularly surprising. Most Christians are against interfering with the natural process of death.
The star told broadcaster Jane Garvey that his mother’s illness had not led him to question his faith because “age happens to all of us”.
He added: “We’re all going to die somehow of something at some time. And my mother was 87. I don’t question my faith about that kind of death. I did question God a lot when Jill Dando got murdered. I had never had a friend or anybody that I knew who had actually got shot and killed. It was a useless death. So I spent a lot of time being angry with God.’
Sir Cliff became a patron of the Alzheimer’s Research Trust in 2002 and has helped raise tens of thousands of pounds by fronting its campaigns.
His mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 1998. At first, she moved in with Sir Cliff’s youngest sister, Joan. However, when it became clear she needed 24-hour professional care the family made the difficult decision to admit her to a residential care home.
As her condition worsened she was often unable to recognise her children, and lost the ability to walk or talk.
Sir Cliff’s father, Rodger, died in 1961 and Dorothy went on to marry Derek Bodkin. They later divorced. In the interview, Sir Cliff also said he supported gay marriages and insisted he had no regrets about not having children. He said: “I don’t see why gay people shouldn’t be married.
“I have got friends, same-sex couples, who have been together for decades. So for them it’s marriage even though they can’t call it marriage. It probably isn’t marriage as such because we recognise it as a man and woman and having babies. That’s neither here nor there for me.”
Sir Cliff also confessed he has to have someone around him all the time. He said: “In life I am fairly gregarious. If I am going to have a meal, it’s nicer with friends. I have never ever lived on my own. I had a guy who used to work with me called Bill Latham and we shared a house for a long time and I used to use him as a sounding board.
“He was very honest with me. He fell in love and went to live with his girlfriend but I still call him up as we’re good friends.” – Daily Mail