Australian medic Philip Nitschke will include Belfast in his first tour of the UK to demonstrate the easiest ways of taking your own life.

He was due to hold his first suicide workshop in Bournemouth next week – because he said its aged residents represent a "good client base" – but the talk was banned yesterday.

The doctor is set to lecture medical students at Queen's university in Belfast next Sunday on his methods which include how to put together and use a suicide kit.

He will also talk to the Northern Ireland Ethics Committee about his views and the chilling contents of the kit.

Dr Nitschke, 61, who founded right-to-die organisation Exit International, said he was also coming to Britain to take advantage of its "liberal publishing laws" to launch an online version of his handbook.

He landed in London yesterday for the start of his tour, and told the News Letter: "I'm giving people all the information they need to die with dignity.

"Christian groups may object to my promotion of self-suicide – but many of the old people who come to see me are Christians.

"Just as some Catholics use contraception, some Christians use my methods.

"Many of these people are in a great deal of pain and want to know how to end their lives without having to implicate anyone else in assisted suicide, which carries a jail penalty."

Dr Nitschke from Darwin in Australia was the first medic in the world to administer lethal injections to end patients' lives.

The hugely controversial move came after a successful campaign to have voluntary euthanasia legalised in the Northern Territory of Australia in the 1990s.

He invented a "Delivery Machine" – now displayed in the British Science Museum – to help four of his patients commit suicide.

A laptop computer hooked up to the deadly device asked the patients a series of questions and when they pressed the same button three times it gave them a lethal dose of the barbiturate drug Nembutal.

The Australian law was overturned by the federal government just nine months after it was introduced – but Dr Nitschke has continued advising people on the best way to end their lives.

His handbook which is set to hit the UK during his visit is banned in Australia and was censored in New Zealand.

Dr Nitschke's first talk will be in London on October 13 and he is still fighting to secure a new venue for his planned lecture in Britain's "retirement capital" Bournemouth three days later.

A council-owned adult education centre in the Dorset town pulled the plug on his booking earlier this week, and yesterday his second venue, the Hermitage Hotel, also cancelled.

David Bell, the Queen's professor who booked Dr Nitschke, was unavailable for comment yesterday, but it is understood the talk will go ahead.

Dr Nitschke said: "I will be telling the medical students what it is like to deal with euthanasia legislation and try and make them understand this is information that people want.