Sitting in his study as we prepared for the first episode, I regretted raising the idea. When Dick at last settled behind his desk I could see that he was almost exhausted by the effort of calming himself for the interview. The youthful actor-psychologist had become a shrunken and wounded old man, visibly fading under his powdered wig, and I hoped that the BBC team would pull the plugs on the entire spectacle. But everything was now grist to television’s mill, like the razor-toothed rollers in abattoirs that stripped the last shreds of gristle from the bones of a carcase.

While we waited for the sound engineer to check his levels, I noticed that Dick had taken down the California licence plates on the walls of his study, the Cocoa Beach beer mats and Cape Kennedy press badges. During the course of our interviews more of these snapshots of his past were to disappear, as if he were consciously dismantling a carefully constructed myth of himself.

But when he spoke to camera he soon rallied.

“… Many people have left detailed accounts of how they ended their lives, from the Greek Stoics to the Jewish doctors in the Warsaw ghetto who kept careful records of how they starved to death. In the past, of course, everyone knew what happened when a human being died—relatives sat around the deathbed, doing their best to comfort the dying, and most people died in their homes. Today, though, death is something we experience for the first time when it happens to us … most people die in hospital, surrounded by machines, and watching someone die, especially a person very close, is more than we can face. Why? What is it about death that so unsettles us? In this series we’re going to look at death through the eyes of a single dying person—me. I’m Dr. Dick Sutherland. Three months ago my doctor told me that…”

While Dick rested from his introduction, I noticed the digital desk clock recording the date, September 23, 1979. The green rice-grain letters blinked through the minutes and hours, unmoved by the camera or Dick’s commentary. He sat in a deck chair in the bathroom while the director and the series producer discussed the few fluffs and verbal slips. They decided that, given the nature of the documentary, these would only enhance its authenticity, despite the problems they posed for the dubbing of foreign-language versions sold abroad. My own role, thankfully, was limited to asking Dick a number of general questions about his state of mind.