In September of last year, my next guest was diagnosed with throat cancer.

Aged 46, Simon Boas was told it was terminal and he only had months to live.

He began writing about his feelings towards life and death in his local newspaper, the Jersey Evening Post.

And his unflinching honesty and total optimism has been inspiring readers across the country,

especially as his imminent death seems to have only increased his gleeful love for the wonder of life.

Somehow he's managed to pull his thoughts together in a book called A Beginner's Guide to Dying,

which comes out in September. It will be a posthumous publication.

I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to Simon last week in what he expected to be one of

his very last interviews. And I started simply by asking how he was that day.

Well, I'm really well, thank you. I mean, I've, my pain is under control and I'm, I'm

terribly happy. It sounds weird to say I'm as happy as I've ever been in my life, but it's been

such a great bonus, actually. I used to think I'd rather be hit by the proverbial bus, but

having a couple of months knowing this is coming has really helped me both do the kind of boring deathmin.

And also just to kind of get my thoughts and prepare myself and feel so accepting of what's to come.

And this is almost certainly my final week, actually.

But again, I just feel so happy as contentious.

The book's called The Beginner's Guide to Dying, but really what I'm trying to convey is how

enjoying life to the full kind of prepares you for this. I briefly thought about subtitling

it morphine and Muscatay, because the two, I think, have kept me going

and in some ways also summarised some of the things I've enjoyed in my life before I got sick.

Yet what I was going to ask, though, is your ability to find such joy in the face of death.

Did you always feel that way about death if you thought

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