Author makes a million differences

The writer behind the Discworld fantasy books spoke out against the patchy provision for thousands of sufferers of the incurable brain disease, saying he wanted to "kick a politician in the teeth".

Pratchett shocked his fans when he announced in December that, at the age of 59, he had been diagnosed with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's after doctors originally believed he had suffered a mini stroke.

The author, who has sold more than 55 million books around the world, delivered the news online in typical Pratchett style, calling the incurable brain disease "an embuggerance".

But he told an annual conference on Alzheimer's that having the disease was like stripping "away your living self a bit at a time".

Alzheimer's affects 700,000 people in the UK but only £11 is spent for each person every year on research, compared to £289 for each cancer patient.

Pratchett said: "There's nearly as many of us as there are cancer sufferers, and it looks as if the number of people with the disease will double within a generation ... It's a shock and a shame, then, to find out that money for research is 3% of that which goes to find cancer cures.

"Perhaps that is why, for example, that I know three people who have successfully survived brain tumours but no-one who has beaten Alzheimer's".

He described Alzheimer's as "a nasty disease, surrounded by shadows and small, largely unseen tragedies" adding: "People don't know what to say, unless they have had it in the family."

The author hit out at a shortage of Alzheimer's specialists and said he was paying for his own drugs because he was "too young to have Alzheimer's for free".