Michael Campbell: Actor with terminal illness wins theatre award

Mr Patrick said his MND had started in his legs, and he now uses a wheelchair.

“It has gotten quite bad, I can’t brace my legs, I can’t move them at all now,” he said.

“And it is slowly getting into my lungs, I think – it’s hard to know but I am finding it more difficult to breathe now.”

Mr Patrick is on an experimental drug trial run from Dublin, and is hoping that will provide some help.

He is still writing drama, including a sitcom about a man in his 30s who gets MND.

“People like it whenever you write stuff that is true to life,” he said.

“There’s an authenticity there that people can latch on to.”

Writing about his own condition “can be hard”, he said, but added that “it can be good at the same time,” he said.

“It’s kind of cathartic, you know,” he said.

“You really have to tap in to what you’re feeling and what you’re going through, which is difficult, but at the same time it allows you to find the funny side of things.

“It does help with my own head writing about it.”