Broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen has revealed she is contemplating ending her personal life if therapy for her lung most cancers doesn’t enhance her situation.

Dame Esther, recognized for beginning the charity Childline and long-running BBC journal programme That’s Life!, revealed in May her cancer had progressed to stage four.

She has now revealed she has joined Swiss organisation Dignitas, which allows individuals to have an assisted suicide.

Speaking to the BBC’s Today podcast, she known as for a free vote (the place MPs are usually not whipped to vote alongside celebration strains) on assisted dying, saying it’s “important that the law catches up with what the country wants”.

She advised the podcast her subsequent scan will decide “whether the miracle drug is performing its miracle or whether it’s given up”, referring to her therapy.

She added: “I have joined Dignitas. I have in my brain thought, well, if the next scan says nothing’s working I might buzz off to Zurich – but it puts my family and friends in a difficult position because they would want to go with me.

“And that implies that the police may prosecute them. So we have got to do one thing. At the second, it is not likely working, is it?”

Assisted suicide is banned in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, with these convicted dealing with as much as 14 years in jail.

The Health and Social Care Committee will publish a report into assisted dying in England and Wales quickly, after launching an inquiry in December 2022.

Dame Esther added her household stated it’s her determination to make, telling the BBC: “I explained to them that actually I don’t want their last memories of me to be painful because if you watch someone you love having a bad death, that memory obliterates all the happy times and I don’t want that to happen.

“I do not wish to be that kind of sufferer of their lives.”

Read extra: MP says current law on assisted dying robbed him of time with his father

She had been uncertain she would make it to her final birthday in June, explaining it had been “very unexpected” she would make it to the Christmas interval.

The broadcaster added: “Anything can happen, I live in a forest, a tree can fall on me.

“I’ve received to drop off my perch for some purpose, and I’m 83, rattling it, so I ought to be jolly grateful and certainly am.”

Dame Esther found fame presenting That’s Life! between 1973 and 1984 – a topical programme which focused on investigations and entertainment, that often had audiences of more than 15 million.

She also set up Childline in 1986, which offers support to children and young people in the UK, which later merged with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in 2006.

In 2013, she set up The Silver Line in 2013 – a charity which supports elderly people suffering loneliness.

She was made a dame in 2015 for services to children and older people.

Anyone feeling emotionally distressed or suicidal can call Samaritans for help on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org within the UK. In the US, name the Samaritans department in your space or 1 (800) 273-TALK