An embuggurance is what Terry Pratchett apparently called his dementia.

It’s his attitude towards this debilitating illness and, ultimately, death, that won him an extra legion of admirers.

Even people who haven’t read his multi-million-selling books had to agree that by brazenly facing down the Alzheimer’s disease that ensnared his mind deserved some applause.

The lasting impression Terry Pratchett made on me was came from one of the most moving, brave and thoughtful pieces of television I have ever seen, and which is due to be aired again by the BBC over the next fortnight.

Choosing to Die explored the emotive subject of assisted suicide in 2011, with Pratchett speaking to a handful of people who had chosen to end their lives.

He travelled to Switzerland with Peter Smedley, a motor neurone disease suffer, who had made the decision to die at a Dignitas clinic instead of inflicting an intolerably slow, incremental death on himself and his wife.

Now that Pratchett has died (mercifully, he did so peacefully in his own home, with his cat at his side), the film takes on an extra layer of poignancy, especially witnessing his visit to the widow of Belgian writer Hugo Claus who decided to commit suicide in 2008 after developing Alzheimer’s, and retired cabbie Mick Gordelier, who chose to stay in the UK, preferring to be cared for in a hospice as he faced his slow demise at the hands of motor neurone disease.

Much controversy was stoked by this film, with pro-lifers and concerned medical experts criticising the documentary as biased. Pratchett was clear from the outset “it should be possible for someone stricken with a serious – and ultimately, fatal – illness to choose to die peacefully with medical help, rather than suffer.”

Although the final segment of the documentary, in which he accompanies Peter Smedley as he takes a lethal dose of the barbiturate Nembutal, is harrowing, it is also unflinching and redemptive. Stark, unidealised (he chokes and asks for water, accompanied by his stoical wife Christine and two Dignitas staff) and then he is… not there any more.

“Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you,” wrote Pratchett in his novel Small Gods.

We’re lucky he shared his thoughts and ideas during his short 58 years, and Choosing To Die is a good starting point.

Now, on to something more cheery.

Neighbours turned 30 this week (I know – how can it only be 30?!) and, even if you haven’t tuned in to Ramsay Street for a decade or maybe two, you you might have seen some of the rehashed hype on telly this week.

There have been plenty reminders of Scott and a bubbly-permed Charlene as well as Stefan Dennis popping up on Good Morning Britain with two fully working legs.

I have a soft spot for Neighbours that defies all logic. No, I haven’t been on one of those Ramsay Street pilgrimages, or even to Australia for that matter. That would clearly spoil the magic being weaved on our screens, twice a day, 30 years after that first trip in 1986, complete with Helen Robinson, a dream sequence and lots of tight shorts and big hair.

The beauty of Neighbours is still, as ever, that is really is so bad it’s good. It’s like a Jabberwocky world where everything about Australian culture is tweaked.

If you tuned in this week (and if not, the omnibus has your name on it) Neighbours treated viewers to Harold Bishop crashing his van into a lavishly piled vegetable stand and a powerfully wonderful Madge popping up in his subconscious.

Silly? Yes. Poorly acted? You bet. But this is a combo of comforting and ridiculous that never fails to cheer me up.