Ex Studio 54 owner Mark Fleischman has died by assisted suicide at Dignitas, according to his former business partner.

The 82-year-old nightclub legend – who ran the Manhattan hotspot frequented by names such as Truman Capote, Liza Minnelli, Andy Warhol, Jerry Hall and Mick Jagger between 1980 and 1986 -passed away in the Swiss city of Zurich after unidentified illness robbed his ability to walk or do other independent tasks.

Daniel Fitzgerald, the co-owner of Los Angeles’ Century Club with Mark in the 90s and 00s told BBC News: “I guess he was in more pain than we knew.”

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Daniel has arranged for a “living wake” for Mark and wanted him to delay his trip to Switzerland, where assisted dying is permitted by law and the charity – which aids terminally ill people to end their life on their own terms – has been operating since 2002.

He continued: “I thought maybe we could convince him not to [go]. “We had a really nice party for him and a lot of his friends came, and everyone thought, ‘he’s going to postpone it a month and we’ll see what we can do’. But he was set on doing it.”

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