Milligan sought fatal dose for dying wife

Press, 16 September 1982, Page 27

Milligan sought fatal dose for dying wife

NZPA London Spike Milligan, the comedian. has revealed that when his wife, Paddy, was dying from cancer in 1978. he asked a doctor to spare her agonising pain with a fatal dose of morphine. Within days his wife died peacefully, the “Sunday News of the World" reported in an interview with Milligan. The entertainer did not identify the doctor. The report quoted Milligan as saying: “I believe in euthanasia . . . you need great love to kill a person ... the pain was unbearable for her and I didn’t want it to go on.

I loved her too much." Mrs Milligan died in 1978, aged 43, after 18 years of marriage. Her husband, now 64, is among Britain’s bestliked entertainers and is a favourite of the Royal Family. Milligan says he knew for 18 months before his wife died that she could not recover, but he kept it from her. ’ “Then some idiot locum came in and told her she was going to die. She deteriorated immediately,” he said. He said he kept his plea to the doctor secret from his children and friends, but did not say why he had decided to reveal it now.

Milligan said he did not send his wife to a home for the terminally ill because he wanted her to die at home, with her family round her. “I finally turned to a doctor I knew and said, ‘This is grossly undignified. I love her too much and the children are suffering desperately; “ ‘This is off the record — between you and me. If you can give her an overdose you would remove this horror from her life and give her the grace of death.’ — He looked at me and never said a word. He was a wonderful man.”