Can’t remember who said it but one of the great joys of getting old is being able to read the obits of friends and enemies you once knew.
While an awful rag, the Mail Online tends to be way ahead of the rest of the pack when reporting that some famous person has carked it.
Given the nature of the publication, they’re invariably first off the blocks with the post-death muckraking.
For obits, it has to be the Times whose celebration of Barry Cryer this morning pisses all over that of BC’s favorite paper, The Grauniad. Don’t know what’s happened to the Grauniad these last few years. Its obits used to be a joy to read but now seem to be hastily cobbled-together cut and paste efforts.
Worse still, they’re habitually way behind the curve – took them like three weeks to run an obit on April Ashley – a major figure in the history of the transgender.
On the plus side, the Graun did give the obit I wrote of my uncle about 18 months back the top half of the Other Lives page so they do have supremely good taste in their choice of obituarists.
Before it vanished behind a paywall, also used to have a soft spot for the Telegraph whose habitual three word dismissal of gay subjects (“He never married”) was a sure sign of its editors and readers’ blinkered attitudes
Think TMZ get there first with most reports of deaths of celebrities
Obituaries from beyond the grave!! Sounds like a story by Edgar Alan Poe.
Rather informative piece from the NY Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/22/insider/post-mortem-byline-obituary.html
I’d recommend The Economist, usually people I’ve barely heard of who have lived fascinating lives.