Книги, похожие на «Victoire Dauxerre, Size Zero: My Life as a Disappearing Model»

Debbie Purdy doesn't want to die. She has far too much to live for. But when the time comes, and the pain is so unbearable that she cannot go on, she wants her husband to be by her side, holding her hand until the end; and she wants to know that he won't be arrested.Debbie Purdy – the face of Britain's right-to-die campaign – suffers from multiple sclerosis. She was diagnosed in 1995 – barely a month after she met her now-husband, Omar Puente, in a bar in Singapore. Within weeks she flew back out to meet Omar and, despite her devastating diagnosis, their relationship grew, as together they travelled Asia doing all the things they loved. When Debbie's health left her no choice but to go back to the UK, Omar followed. They married in 1998.But since the death in 2002 of motor neurone disease sufferer Diane Pretty, who lost her legal battle to have her husband help her take her own life, there has been dark cloud on the horizon for Debbie. She is in pain all the time, with poor circulation, headaches, bed sores and muscle cramps. Once or twice a week, she falls in the shower, presses her panic button and waits for complete strangers to come and help. People pity Debbie, saying she must feel undignified. She disagrees. The only thing she thinks is undignified is having no control over her life or death.When the pain becomes unbearable Debbie wants to be able to choose to end her life, surrounded by her loved ones. In England and Wales this is considered assisting suicide – a crime punishable by up to 14 years imprisonment. Debbie fears as a black foreigner Omar is more likely to face prosecution. All she wants is for the law to be clarified. Then she can make sure Omar never crosses the line.At the end of July 2009 Debbie's long fight was finally rewarded with a court ruling that the current lack of clarity is a violation of the right to a private and family life, and the Director of Public Prosecutions being ordered to issue clear guidance on when prosecutions can be brought in assisted suicide cases, bringing hope and reassurance thousands nationwide.Now, with passion and honesty, Debbie shares her unique story. Told with the joie-de-vivre and grace for which she has become known, Debbie describes her life and her battle.

The searingly honest and at times harrowing autobiography of the former Liverpool, Aston Villa and England striker. Exposes the dark and often seedy world hidden behind the glamorous facade of professional football.‘I was a mess. I couldn’t get out of bed. I couldn’t structure my day properly. I couldn’t face having a shower or getting dressed. Those all seemed like major events I didn’t want to confront.’Once the most charismatic and expensive player in the new Premiership flooded with cash, Stan Collymore had, by the age of 28, booked himself into The Priory to treat his depression, close to self-destruction and unable to get his head round playing at all.Along the way, he had been the goalscorer nobody wanted to congratulate, the centre-forward no one knew how to manage, a deeply reluctant star in a tabloid culture that saw him make the front pages as often as the back, and that waited for him to crack up or lash out. When he eventually did, it was, infamously, inevitably, at his then celebrity girlfriend, Ulrika Jonsson.But then retired from football in 2001 and finding himself in the commentary box, he proved he did care about the game, rather too much perhaps, sounding like a fan as much as an ex-player – and at a stroke he had more in common with the rest of the nation. He knew it was all so much more than a game, and what happened on the field was only a reflection of what was going on inside players’ heads.The contradictions remain. A man, who had a steady stream of celebrity women falling at his feet, shamed by his voyeurism in a Cannock car park; a star with everything who was once discovered by his wife tightening a belt around his neck; a loving dad of two whose own father walked out of the marital home and who Collymore continues to blot from his memory to this day; a footballer who abstains from drugs, yet who needs therapy at Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous; the loner slated for his aloofness who found critical acclaim as a football pundit on national prime-time radio.This is Stan Collymore’s own life story, the real person on his flawed character and personal demons, telling it like you have never seen before – raw and uncut.