Oscar-winning actor Sir Michael Caine has revealed that he arranged for his father to be euthanased in 1955. Sir Michael told a British radio station that his father, Maurice Micklewhite, a Billingsgate fish market porter, had liver cancer. He was suffering terribly but he was expected to live another three or four days.

Seventy-seven-year-old Caine described the situation: "I said to this doctor, I said 'Isn't there anything else you could do, just give him an overdose and end this', because I wanted him to go and he said 'Oh no, no, no, we couldn't do that.' Then, as I was leaving, he said 'Come back at midnight.' I came back at midnight and my father died at five past 12. So he'd done it…"

Sir Michael, who is currently promoting his autobiography, said that he never told his mother, who died 34 years later. A spokesman for the group Dignity in Dying welcomed his confession and called for the legalisation of assisted suicide. ~ Guardian, Oct 9