Legend's widow considered mercy killing

Published on Sunday 27 June 2004 02:45

RIKKI Fulton’s widow has confessed she considered killing her husband to end his suffering.

Kate Matheson admitted she wanted to help Fulton die at the end of last year during a planned weekend at home from hospital.

"In the end he wasn’t fit enough to come home, but I had had it very much in my mind that I would make sure he didn’t wake up again." said Matheson. "I didn’t give a damn if I had to go to prison or whatever, I was quite prepared to do it... and yet, he beat me to it.

"I don’t know if you believe in euthanasia, but I certainly do," she added.

Matheson was grateful in the end that the comic legend died of MRSA and not of the disease he had ruefully nicknamed his pal "Al Zheimer".

"Alzheimer’s can go on forever. Rikki had had an operation at the Western and he caught MRSA. It went away and then it came back and that thankfully was what killed him.

"But I don’t blame the Western… the sooner Rikki was out of Alzheimer’s, the better. It wasn’t a case of if you’d done this or that, he would have been saved. I was glad for him. You can imagine the frustration of not being able to remember for someone with the brain he had."

In the end, Fulton recognised only Matheson and their great friend, Tony Roper. "Tony has been the most wonderful friend you could imagine. He went to visit him all the time.

"Then Rikki had a bad fall and broke his hip and he couldn’t walk. People with Alzheimer’s seem to walk and walk and walk and he couldn’t do that. So I was not unhappy when it came to the stage where he wasn’t going to live."

Matheson moves slowly and carefully now. In the months since Fulton’s death, the osteoarthritis in her spine has taken a severe hold and she leans heavily on a stick. Her pelvis is twisted and she is on strong painkillers.

She hit out at newspaper reports that the couple had cancelled a 10,000 bequest to cleaner Jean Danks and reneged on a bequest of a grand piano to an old friend, the actor Gregor Fisher, out of the 1m will.

"I don’t care about my being hurt. I don’t give a damn what they say about me. But I won’t accept them saying lies about Rikki. I just won’t," she says.

"They wouldn’t dare say anything like that about Rikki if he was alive. Greg is a very dear friend and this was sorted out a long time ago. He has quite enough pianos and he makes a joke of it. Rikki drew up his will in 1997 but by the time he changed the bequest in 2001, he was heavily in the hands of Alzheimer’s.

"He really didn’t know what he was doing. He would never have done it before he had Alzheimer’s.

"It was just better to let him go on and not make waves for him. I didn’t want to worry him. I just thought that when the will was published, I would sort it out."

Matheson added: "Rikki loved Scotland. He particularly loved Glasgow, and when he died, it was quite obvious that Glasgow loved him. It was very moving."

She recalled the moment the comedian died. "I sat beside him holding his hand and, although I have no medical knowledge, as his breathing became shallower, I kissed him on the lips. And then he lay back and stopped breathing so you couldn’t wish for a more peaceful death for someone you loved. I’m so grateful I have that.

"He was an incredible man. Trust him to make the last move. It was so peaceful and he was so loved."