Peter Smedley at Ston Easton Park Hotel in Somerset which he and wife Christine sold before coming to Guernsey more than a decade ago. Sir Terry Pratchett’s documentary of Mr Smedley’s assisted suicide is screened on BBC2 on Monday.

‘BE STRONG, my darling’ were the final words of Guernsey resident Peter Smedley, who committed assisted suicide in Switzerland.

The former hotelier, who suffered from motor neurone disease, was filmed taking his own life at the Swiss Dignitas clinic in December as part of a moving documentary investigating assisted suicide.

In the film, to be broadcast on BBC2 on Monday night but shown at a press screening yesterday, Mr Smedley drinks a draught of specially prepared toxins.

Within 15 minutes he has fallen asleep and died.

Made by author Sir Terry Pratchett, who has Alzheimer’s disease, the documentary follows Mr Smedley from his home in St Peter Port to a nondescript building on an industrial estate in Zurich, where the Dignitas clinic is based.

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