Television presenter and Childline founder Dame Esther Rantzen has died at the age of 86. The former That's Life! host was diagnosed with lung cancer in January 2023 after noticing a lump under her armpit weeks earlier.
At the time of sharing her diagnosis, Dame Esther said her cancer had "spread" and she had been undergoing several tests. In May of the same year, she announced her condition had reached stage four and she was taking a new form of medication to help.
Dignitas and the campaign for assisted dying
Before her death, Esther revealed she had joined assisted dying clinic Dignitas in Switzerland after being told her cancer had spread. She said she was undergoing a "miracle" treatment but was considering travelling to Zurich, where assisted dying is legal, if it did not work.
However, in an interview in September 2026, she admitted she was "too physically fragile to make the journey" to Dignitas. She was speaking ahead of an MPs vote on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, where she urged those in power to vote in favour of legalising assisted dying for England and Wales.
"Everything I didn't want to happen I'm having to go through now, which means that the people I love and care about either cannot visit me, or when they do, see me suffering pain or indignity which will inevitably get between them and our shared happy memories, and may even overwhelm the way they think of me," she said.
Family's support and legal concerns
Esther had been a staunch campaigner for the Bill, which would allow terminally ill people in England and Wales with fewer than six months to live to seek an assisted death, subject to approval by doctors and legal professionals. It had originally passed two votes in the Commons in 2024 and 2025 but ran out of time in the Lords in April.
It was reintroduced by Labour MP Lauren Edwards and will go through the process once more, where initially MPs vote on the Second Reading of the Bill before it then goes through Parliament for further consideration by MPs and peers in the House of Lords.
Of her wish to go to Dignitas with the law as it stands, Esther admitted her decision had put her family and friends in a difficult position. She told Radio 4: "They would want to go with me. The police might prosecute them."
"My family say it's my choice. I explained to them that I don't want their last memories of me to be painful. If you watch someone you love having a bad death, that memory obliterates all the happy times."
Dame Esther's daughter, Rebecca Wilcox, said she supported her mum's decision but feared travelling with her to the clinic could lead to her arrest. She said: "I'm not legally allowed to say I'd go with her, that I would hold her hand - and that is absolutely ridiculous. I should be able to sit with my mother in her last moments.
"I can't go to prison, I can't go through a court case at the worst point of my life, when I've lost my person and I'm suddenly being prosecuted with her death. It's unfathomable. I can't believe this is the situation we're in."
The broadcaster leaves behind her three children, who she shared with Desmond Wilcox.
