So who decided that George Best should have a state funeral? Because that’s what it was, with the thousands of mourners, the wall-to-wall live coverage on the TV, the endless stories in today’s newspapers, all with obligatory quotes about how George was the people’s prince…
The grief fest that, post-Diana, now seems obligatory, will obviously lead to a progressive upping of the stakes as more famous folk die. It seems to me that we can expect similar scenes when the following shuffle off their mortal coil:
Sir Thumbs Aloft (but not Ringo)
Lord Attenborough (but not David)
Sir Elton John
Sir Bobby Charlton
Sir Michael Jagger (but not Keef, who is clearly indestructible anyway)
Sir Trevor McDonald
Joan Collins
Lord Lloyd-Webber (but not Julian, or Tim Rice)
Any more?
Future State Funerals by Dr Rob Spence is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
I think people do this sort of thing because they want to be part of a physical crowd and like to be swept away with its emotions. (Some of us do and some of us don’t.) This sort of thing is a safe way of joining such a crowd. To me a smallish group of people is one thing but a crowd is quite another. My dad takes the anti-social view that the intelligence of a crowd is indirectly proportional to the number of people in it.
Off topic. Did you hear the lightening strike in St Annes? I was half asleep when I heard what I thought was a distant explosion at around 7 am yesterday. I wondered what on earth it was.
Yes – I was lying awake anyway. It sounded like a big explosion from our house.
It must have been a big explosion if I could hear it in Kirkham!
State Funerals
Ken Roache
Ant and Dec (as they have melded to become Siamese twins they wll be buried together whether both are dead or not. In fact I’m happy that they be buried together regardless of whether either is dead – and no doubt millions will tune in for this reality TV jamboree)
Maggie Thatcher (of course)
Ken Dodd
Sorry to hear about the lightening strike in St Annes but I didn’t hear it here – I had the window closed so it may be that.
Hmmmm… a reality TV show where you vote for which dead person gets a state funeral. Watch this space…