People should write their own obituaries and spare us the embarrassing platitudes

Clichéd tributes, delivered by vicars who don't even know the deceased, must stop

When I go, you can hang out the banners and shout it from the rooftops (iStock/Getty)

When you’re dead, how do you want to be remembered? Unless you’re a chronic narcissist, does it matter that much? A funeral should be a celebration of a life well-lived, not an exercise in snivelling misery.

Let’s take our inspiration from Jean Hedley, formerly of County Durham, a prodigious local fundraiser who sounds like an extremely well-balanced woman. When Jean – who set up and ran a line dancing class for 20 years – died last month, aged 91, she had prepared for the event by writing her own obituary, published in the Northern Echo.

It said she’d “finally popped her clogs” and “gone to be with Ted, her loving late husband, who she has missed terribly for 25 years”. Her message went on: “Don’t be sad, she was ready, it was time to go. No flowers, no tears, no sad poems or hymns.” I reckon Jean – like most of us – had sat through funerals where a vicar who had never met the deceased mouthed off platitudes about what a fine person they were. A kind of one-size-fits-all tribute, an exercise in box-ticking by a lackey of the Church of England.

When I go, you can hang out the banners and shout it from the rooftops. “She was difficult. She was always right. And there were only two ways to do anything. Janet’s way and the wrong way.” That’s my obituary in a nutshell.