Blur drummer slams ‘psychopathic’ laws after ex-wife was forced to end her own life alone

Dave Rowntree has criticised the UK laws surrounding assisted dying after his ex-wife was compelled to travel to Dignitas alone earlier this year.

The Blur drummer called the laws ‘psychopathic’ after Paola Marra, who he wed in 1994, made the decision to end her life in Switzerland after a terminal cancer diagnosis.

Marra flew to Zurich in March after several rounds of treatment and surgeries for her bowel cancer, which was made worse by her allergy to painkillers.

Although the pair divorced in 2000, Rowntree, 60, supported his ex-wife before her final journey, unable to join her at the risk of arrest upon his re-entry to the UK.

‘It is the system washing its hands of difficult problems in a way that I can’t stomach,’ the Parklife hitmaker told The Guardian.

There have been attempts in recent years to legalise assisted dying in the UK, with a Private Member’s Bill currently in the House of Lords.

Rowntree continued: ‘That’s the whole point of the state. The state can declare war … And if the state isn’t going to take these kinds of difficult decisions, what the f**k is the point in having the state?

‘This is psychopathic, where we are now, because the whole point of this [should be] to try to make things easier for the real victim in this – the terminally ill person.’

Assisted dying is legal in Switzerland but only one organisation, Dignitas, is currently available to non-citizens, at a considerable expense.

Initially, Rowntree tried to convince Marra not to make the journey and instead die at home but her mind was made up.

Despite the UK laws, the Song 2 icon offered to travel with her, frantically searching for flights once she had arrived in Switzerland and called him stating she ‘didn’t know if she could do it on her own’.

However, shortly after Marra changed her mind, dying alone the following morning after urging her ex-husband to support a change in the law.

Rowntree, who ran as a Labour candidate in the last election, has abided by her dying wish and supported the calls for a law change.

Opposers of the highly divisive bill argue that this could allow for disabled, elderly, and others at risk to be coerced into taking their own lives.

The current bill, put forward by Kim Leadbeater, comes after Baroness Meacher’s 2022 Bill stalled in the House of Lords after a second reading.

Campaigners have been pushing for a law change for over a decade when Lord Falconer’s first Assisted Dying Bill was put forward, which was halted by the 2015 General Election.

Leadbeater argued her ‘choice at the end of life’ bill will include ‘stringent’ criteria and a cooling-off period, with a six-month terminal diagnosis limit proposed.

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