In the unlikely event that anyone wants my organs, it should be up to me

Rod Liddle says that the notion of ‘compulsory donations’ is oxymoronic and the pinnacle of the medical profession’s zeal to get its hands on our corpses

The question is, I suppose, hypothetical in my case. Or beyond even hypothetical. They are not going to want the liver of someone who opens a bottle of Rioja just as Naughtie announces it’s time for Thought for the Day. I find it impossible to listen to that vapid, platitudinous drivel without some form of sustenance close to hand. When it’s that endlessly emollient Sikh bloke, or Anne Atkins, I make it a large Jack Daniels.

Nor, I suppose, would they want my lungs, the interior of which, through a copious and ever improving intake of cigarettes, now resemble the contents of a Tate & Lyle tin of black molasses; there’s about two square inches left right at the top, for oxygen. My kidneys, I think, are OK — it’s literally weeks since I passed any blood. My heart, meanwhile, is sitting there, doing its stuff, biding its time for a while. It will attack when my back is turned, when I least expect it. The medical vultures are also after corneas, I understand; but again, mine will be of little use. I view the world through windows encrusted with grime, both literally and metaphorically. These days when I watch football on TV I have to guess where the ball is, unless I sit with my nose touching the screen. The guessing is quite good fun, actually, especially when England are playing. But I don’t suppose they’d want my corneas either.

This has been, in many ways, a bad government. But it has never been worse than when its own controlling, authoritarian impulses are buttressed by the views of our fundamentalist medical clergy.