JENNI MURRAY, the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, has made a pact with two friends that they will help each other to die if any of them develops a debilitating and incurable illness.

Murray, along with Sally Feldman, a former editor of Woman’s Hour, and Jane Wilton, a mutual friend, now plan to draw up a written agreement to seal an assisted suicide pact.

At the time the BBC presenter was making a television documentary about euthanasia and the three women agreed that if they became so ill that they were incapacitated either physically or mentally, they would prefer to die.

Assisted suicide is illegal in Britain and there has been strong pressure to change the law to allow doctors to hasten the death of terminally ill patients.

Murray and her friends would be acting illegally if they helped one another die. They believe, however, that people should be allowed to determine when they die so as to avoid excessive pain or distress for their relatives.

“When my time comes I want to be able to decide about my destiny,” says Murray in Don’t Get Me Started, to be broadcast on Tuesday on Five. The series, billed as “personal rant” programmes, has included presenters such as Michael Buerk, the newsreader, criticising the “femocracy” and claiming that women are too powerful.

Murray, who has presented Woman’s Hour since 1987, begins her programme by saying that she does not want her children to suffer from her being desperately ill.

She does acknowledge, however, that while she is in favour of her friends helping her to die, the situation would be far worse if close family members were involved and that she would find it hard to do the same if her mother said “let me go”.

Murray has two sons but says that neither of them wanted to take part in the recording. She also mentions that her mother has Parkinson’s disease and her father is the carer but that they are a private couple and did not want to take part. Murray, 56, is vice-president of the Parkinson’s Disease Society.

Murray contrasts Britain’s generally secular character with its laws on euthanasia which, she claims, are sustained by a religious minority.

She considers living wills but concludes that while they allow people to refuse treatment that may help to keep them alive, it does not request treatment to accelerate death.

“But this is what I’d like,” says Murray. The programme quotes statistics which show that a large proportion of the British public share her views.

Filmed over coffee and croissants in a cafe, Murray, Feldman and Wilton, while discussing the problems of old age and illness, eventually reach their pact.

Murray begins by asking her friends, “At what point would you agree to help me?” Feldman says only if she (Murray) was suffering extreme pain or had “lost her marbles”. Wilton says she would like to think that she would risk going to prison by helping one of her friends to die. The three then discuss the methods they might use to hasten death, such as injections or smothering one another with a pillow. In the end they decide to seal the pact with a formal document.

After the discussion had been filmed, Murray, who chaired the Orange prize for women’s fiction in 2005, admits she was surprised that the three agreed on their course of action.

The programme also includes footage of Britons such as Reg Crew, who suffered from motor neurone disease and travelled to Switzerland to die at Dignitas, the Zurich-based assisted suicide clinic.

Supporters of euthanasia include Sir Ludovic Kennedy, the writer and broadcaster, and Lord Joffe, who introduced a bill in parliament to change the law to allow assisted suicide.

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