Comedy of the Week - Stuart Mitchell's Cost of Dying

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

This first episode takes a cheeky look at the costs of end of life care and you might be surprised to find out just how pricey it is to pop your clogs!When it seems like everything is getting more expensive; comedian, former banker and serial funeral-organiser Stuart Mitchell breaks down the true Cost of Dying. Using his own experience Stuart aims to find out if can we even afford to kick the bucket? You’ll learn so much about the hidden costs of dying, you may well decide not to bother doing it!To find more episodes from this series, search "Stand-Up Specials" on BBC Sounds.Written and Performed by Stuart Mitchell Producer: Lauren Mackay Sound: Andy Hay and Chris Currie

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts Welcome to Stuart Mitchell's Cost to Dime And yes, the title says it all This is a show about how when someone dies You get hit with a load of surprise hidden extra costs It's a bit like flying Ryanair to heaven

Only on this journey, you're not checking in You're checking out I'll chip in from time to time during the show With some additional information because that's what every comedy show needs. Live fact-checking. This series was born as I think about and talk about deaf a lot,

having arranged six friendrows for my family members. Not so much, I've been there, got the T-shirt, more, I've been there, I've donated all the T-shirts to the British Heart Foundation. Across this series, I'm hoping to give you a unique insight into the costs involved

when we take that final breath. And I feel I'm best place to offer this advice as I previously worked for an end-of-life charity for nearly two decades. Ironically, before then, I was a banker where most people wished I was dead. I'm going to be drawn on my own experience in regards to the direct costs

my family picked up after my dad passed away. Sorry, I meant to change that. I'm going to be drawn in my experience in regards to the direct cost I picked up. You see, it wasn't just his body I picked up. I saved on that, to be fair. Instead of £600 for a hearse, I took him in the car

and propped him up in the front seat so I could use the carpool lane. So my dad died on the same day the Conservatives won the 2015 general election. I know, turns out Dad was first past the post. My dad died at 61 and was diagnosed with cancer, aged 60. they gave him five years to live

but you get four years off for good behaviour. And given that terminal diagnosis that's when my dad's true cost of dying really started. It wasn't just my dad's body that slowly deteriorated and came to a halt but also his earning potential. If you didn't know your income tends to peak

in your 50s and decline in your 60s particularly if you're on only fans. The quality of care received by people at the end of life has become a major policy concern. Yes, we all agree charities like Macmillan and Marie Curie are great, but at the end of the day, well, it's the end of the day. I mean, these charities are fantastic. Macmillan, they were with my dad.

They were awesome. Anyone else dealt with McMillan, Maricure? Fantastic. aren't they? They're great. They're great. But always the same outcome. No one walks out and say, your dad, he's fine. Trap wind. As soon as my dad was given that terminal diagnosis, he stopped working. To be fair, that was the least of his worries as six months later he stopped breathing. He went from earning $550 a week to the maximum benefit of a week.

for pip and gaining pip is a long-winded process they basically piss you off and pip me off before you pop off my dad's got a hundred and seventy-two pound fifty pence a week his earnings dropped over two-thirds overnight the biggest dropping wages ever only to be beaten eight years later by Philip Schofield I didn't know what celebrity to put in there Dad was running a weekly deficit of £377.50 pence, over £1,500 a month in the red. Even the UK Chancellor was like, that's impressive.

And six months later, he went from £9,000 in the red to being dead. That timeframe between his terminal diagnosis and death had cost him financially over £10,000. And yet even when dead, the Department for Wendell, working pensions classdom is fit for work. So what about the cost of giving my dad George a good death? I mean, I think it was a good death. He sounded relieved when he took out that final breath, like,

oh. My stepmom described it as taking off her brat after a 12-hour shift. Now, with a terminal. diagnosis, of course, comes palliative care. Dad had palliative chemotherapy, which can cost the NHS up to £30,000 per round. I believe you can go to Turkey and get it done cheaper, and they'll do your teeth and bum lift at the same time. The cost varies massively with individual medical needs. Indeed, chemotherapy costs the NHS at estimated 1.4 billion a year, so about the same amount if you've ever had to buy a train ticket on the day.

With dad having chemo I was sitting in the waiting room with other relatives of cancer patients you think you get depressed the day after Christmas you want to try being there they were all saying oh my wife has two years max and I didn't have the heart to tell him I'm not called Max

and some other sister is crying saying she's only got 18 months and it felt a bit competitive so I just sat there saying well my dad's gone they're actually bagging them up just now at 30,000 pounds a patient my dad decided to stop chemo

and take the money I'm joking my stepmom took all that for 30 grandsworth of radioactivity the least I expected for him was to develop superpowers Dad's right to choose where to die was taken out his hands

as a hospice bed wasn't available my dad paid 12% national insurance contributions every year for 45 years and he had to die in a hospital bed no option but to die in hospital How does that work? Well, he lies under the covers and stops breathing, but...

You see, for 15 years, I worked for an end-of-life charity. I went from selling lottery tickets as my first job to end-of-life care. Very different reaction when you tell someone the numbers are up. And that joke is why I no longer work for the end-of-life charity. You see, when you work in a hospice, you understand it every day.

counts. It's around £300 a day minimum for a hospice to take an inpatient. And hospices struggle for funding. Plus, to be fair, they're losing customers daily. And it's hard for an end-of-life charity to raise money when it's difficult to get testimonials. You don't have the benefit of my dad on their website. Five stars. Wouldn't die anywhere else. Hospices are vastly underfunded, only receiving about 26% of their costs from the government the other 74% is raised through them selling your clothes. You see, I don't want to die at home. I had enough of that doing corporate gigs on Zoom.

So outside a hospital or hospice environment, you can have care in the community. And this enables individuals to remain out of hospital in their last few days of life with more local GP involvement. Approximately two thirds of patients see their GP at least once during the last three months of life.

The other third die while waiting on the phone to book an appointment. Any GP receptionist's son? Ironically, no one answered. So it costs a UK hospice around £300 a day minimum to give you a bed for free it's extra if you want a mattress

plus that 300 pound includes dinner bed and breakfast so an average 14 day stay amounts to over 3,500 pound I mean you could get a weekend and centre parts for that in the UK there's an estimated 220 adult hospice and palliative

care units with a total of 3,200 beds that's like one floor of a travel lodge. And if you've stayed on a travel lodge, it's fair to say, after 14 days, you wish you were dead. As I said, my dad died in hospital. To die in hospital is far more expensive in a hospice, at least £450 a day billed to the NHS. A major point of interest was helping to develop a care plan so my dad could die at home. But due to the shortest of staff in ambulances. It couldn't happen

and after ten days he ended up dying in Ward 16 at Wishaw General Hospital in between my step-mum's breasts. He genuinely was in a better place. His last words were brr-brr.

Those cared for in the community spent two and a half fewer days of their final 90 days in hospital. Therefore, hospital costs are lower for individuals cared at home. The hospital costs are lower, but the tea bags and biscuits spill really spirals. I'll tell you, they district nurses will eat you out of house and home. Dad had 11 GP visits in his final 90 days of life,

with the average taking 10 minutes as a face-to-face GP consultation, which costs, according to Marie Curie, £56 each. Now, sadly, I must confess I can't calculate the cost of all my dad's drugs during his treatment as my mate could only give me street value. Seriously, it would be impossible to guess the cost because each case is different.

I'm not saying Dad was on a lot of drugs, but in his will, he left me a unicorn. And I do know he had seven hours of district nursing care during his final three months. and the district nurse wasn't the friend list. I don't know what district she was from, but judging by her attitude,

maybe the district of Mordor. And assuming district nursing costs an average 78 pounds per hour, this translated to his total treatment of 546 pound. I mean, my dog walker is only 15 pound an hour, plus she would have given him biscuits. and tickled his belly. My dad's life expectancy should have been 84,

so he missed out on 19 years estate pension, and as a minimum, excluding rises, that would have been £218,538, at 11,502 pounds, plus his private pension, 450 a month. So that's a grand total my dad missed out on, 136,000 and 800 pounds. However, his private pension transferred to my stepmom, so it's not included in the running total.

Ironically, my stepmom's excluded, just like me and my dad's will. So my dad lost out in over 228,000 pounds on his state pension. Some under 35s listening now, wondering what a pension is. it's something you can only dream of so that concludes episode one and I've not even touched on additional costs when dad was diagnosed terminal

I had to pull six months of gigs that included a tour of New Zealand and Australia I lost about £6,000 I mean I made it all back the following year unless the tax office is listening so excluding my dad's private pension that transferred over to my stepmom the running cost of death to my dad

and the NHS combined at the end of episode 1 is 314,200 pound just shy of what I paid in hospital parking to visit him join me for the next episode which is all about taxis they say two things in life are certain

deaf and taxis and it's true if HMRC finds out you're not paying your taxis you're dead goodbye Stuart Mitchell's Cost of Dine was written and performed by me, Stuart Mitchell. It was produced by Lorne McKay and was a BBC Scotland production for Radio 4. Stuart Mitchell here.

If you like that episode, then you can hear more from the series on BBC Sounds. Just search Stuart Mitchell's Cost of Dine. Hello, I'm Brian Cox. I'm Robinance and we're back for a new series of The Infinite Monkey Cage. we have our 201st extravaganza where we're going to talk about how animals emote went around trains and tunnels or something like that, I'm not entirely sure.

We're doing one on potatoes. Of course we're doing one on potatoes. You love potatoes. I know, but... Yeah, you love chips, you love mash. I'll only enjoy it if it's got curry sauce on it. We've got techno fossils, moths versus butterflies and a history of light.

That'll do, won't it? Listen first on BBC Sounds.