Introduction

Will Self reflects on the spread of the craze for so-called 'bucket lists'.

He argues that 'far from introducing the ecstatic into our necessarily ephemeral existence, the bucket list reimposes the clock-watching go-round most of us have endured for most of our lives'.

'What gives life to life is death - nothing else,' he writes, 'while to live that life to the full is to realize this fully'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Editor: Bridget Harney