At death’s door

It is a sunny Saturday afternoon in Covent Garden and we are all learning how to kill ourselves. The venue is a nondescript community centre in Stukeley Street. It usually hosts activities for children, so there are crayon drawings and anti-bullying posters on the noticeboard. Today, however, a purple pop-up banner displays the Exit International logo and its mission statement: ‘A peaceful death is everybody’s right.’

Admittance to the four-hour workshop costs £50 and is reserved for those over the age of 50 and the seriously ill. The company collects around the tea hatch, everyone fanning themselves with their copies of the Exit International magazine, Deliverance.

There are 80 or so men and women, grey-haired and crepe-soled. They arrive on each other’s arms and with walking aids. A mobility scooter does a three-point turn in the narrow corridor. Philip Nitschke sits at the front with a laptop and a screen, ready to embark upon his specialist topics — hypoxic death, poisons, barbiturates, the legal issues and the ‘Swiss options’.