May 24, 2023 - 6:10pm
An obituary is not a tribute. That was the headline of a letter written in 2004 by the editor of the British Medical Journal to justify his publication of an obit of Harold Shipman. The sentiment should have been obvious from the opening words of the article in question: “A general practitioner and murderer.”
But this fine journalistic form may soon merit an obituary of its own — as increasing numbers of millennial and Gen Z readers mistake an obituary for a eulogy. Yesterday, I was waiting for the inevitable outrage following the death of entertainer and convicted paedophile Rolf Harris. But the BBC neatly sidestepped this, by simply not publishing an assessment of his life at all. This was despite the fact it had one pre-written, by the man who had written the piece for child murderer Myra Hindley (which they did put out).
“The BBC no longer publishes the well-researched and considered obituary,” Nick Serpell, the BBC’s former News Obituary Editor, tells me. “Four years before I left [in 2018], it became clear that the long-form obit on the website was falling out of favour. Indeed, one senior editor told me that there had been a discussion about removing the word ‘Obituary’ from the top of the piece as it might ‘dissuade younger audiences from clicking through’.”
Instead, for Harris, Auntie put out a paltry 420-word news story online. Some may see this as a sign of his relegation to well-deserved obscurity, but the BBC owes its readers far more, not least as the institution that shot him into the celebrity stratosphere and kept him there for five decades.
Clive Myrie spoke just 64 words on the News at Ten, referring to Harris as once being “a regular fixture on television”. In fact, he was for some time an adored national treasure — which is crucial to understanding his heinous crimes.
Serpell also wrote the obituary of Stuart Hall, another disgraced BBC presenter, but says, “My bet is that, when he dies, they won’t run that one either. Too close to home.”
Of course, obituary writers will frequently get it wrong. The Beeb’s obit of Sir Jimmy Savile described a “devout Roman Catholic” and “iconic Mr Fixit” who “maintained this benevolent persona beyond the screen”. But this still remains a vital first draft of history, revealing the spell Savile had cast on a large part of the nation at the time of his death.
The flip side of this muddleheadedness is the betrayal fans feel at anything short of a hagiography of their heroes. Recently, the Guardian was savaged for referring to the shortcomings of boy band The Wanted in Tom Parker’s obituary, and for describing the “rackety life” of Girls Aloud’s Sarah Harding (the Times was also condemned for speaking of her “unexceptional” talent).
We are living in an era when celebrities urge us to #BeKind. But the job of journalists, and indeed historians, is to tell the unvarnished truth, sometimes brutally so. While social niceties compel everyone else not to “speak ill” of the recently departed, press hounds have a very different dictum: “You can’t libel the dead.”
Indeed, the finest obits are anything but adulatory. Take Richard J Evans’s article for the Guardian on the life of historian Norman Stone, who “never bothered to check his facts”, “became notorious for groping his female students” and collapsed drunk in front of Margaret Thatcher.
At its best, the obituary is an enlightening — and even entertaining — part of the public record. And while it may feel more comforting to try to erase monstrous figures from our consciousness, the painful truth is that we have much more important lessons to learn from the lives of the notorious than the merely notable.
An obituary is the perfect place to examine their motives and to shine a light on their victims — as well as on their requisite army of blind eye-turners, plausible deniers and brazen enablers.
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SubscribeI love to read obituaries and learn the good and the bad about people. I’m not trying to judge because we all have good and bad is us, but there are many fascinating stories of how successful people reached the top of their field and, sometimes, the price they paid.
I recently read an old obit of the great British ballerina Margot Fonteyn which led me to a youtube video about her life. A hugely talented woman who lost her father early and that seemed to drive her choice in men later in life, resulting in a disastrous marriage to a guy from a politically prominent Panamanian family who was little more than a con man. He was shot by political rivals and paralyzed. She had to continue dancing well into middle age just to pay the bills and that exertion injured her body. She died penniless, with her friend Rudolph Nureyev paying much of her medical expenses. But watch her TV interviews later in life and you’d never guess she wasn’t living a life of cultured retirement.
The New Censors would deprive us of such wonderful stories. Luckily we’ll never have to read their obits which would be utterly dull.
I love to read obituaries and learn the good and the bad about people. I’m not trying to judge because we all have good and bad is us, but there are many fascinating stories of how successful people reached the top of their field and, sometimes, the price they paid.
I recently read an old obit of the great British ballerina Margot Fonteyn which led me to a youtube video about her life. A hugely talented woman who lost her father early and that seemed to drive her choice in men later in life, resulting in a disastrous marriage to a guy from a politically prominent Panamanian family who was little more than a con man. He was shot by political rivals and paralyzed. She had to continue dancing well into middle age just to pay the bills and that exertion injured her body. She died penniless, with her friend Rudolph Nureyev paying much of her medical expenses. But watch her TV interviews later in life and you’d never guess she wasn’t living a life of cultured retirement.
The New Censors would deprive us of such wonderful stories. Luckily we’ll never have to read their obits which would be utterly dull.
I wonder if #bekind is more generational? Young celebs – be kind, older celebs – write them out of history. Where it should be – all celebs #behonest.
I wonder if #bekind is more generational? Young celebs – be kind, older celebs – write them out of history. Where it should be – all celebs #behonest.
I entirely agree with Mr Smallman and with J Bryant that people’s lives (those that are in the public eye, anyway) should not simply be brushed under the carpet. Rolf Harris had worked for the BBC for 4 or 5 decades as an entertainer before his crimes were unmasked.
As the article has already said, an obit was published in the BMJ of Harold Shipman, whose multiple murders heavily eclipsed anything he did as a practising doctor. And with Myra Hindley, I haven’t actually heard anything good at all said or written about the child murderer.
So, a ‘warts and all’ obituary is not a bad thing, and is I believe very informative to the public. And the BBC should be there to inform us. The BBC did publish an obituary of Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall, but are probably getting embarrassed that one of their own presenters was not unmasked much sooner regarding their conduct to the British public.
The BBC has an obituary of Stuart Hall ready, just as many media outlets have obituaries ready. They haven’t published it yet for a very good reason. He’s still alive.
I can highly recommend Andrew O’Hagan’s long article on the procession of dodgy characters at the BBC, going back at least to 1940. Any number of famous and lovable National Treasures merited a ferocious obituary.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n21/andrew-o-hagan/light-entertainment
The BBC has an obituary of Stuart Hall ready, just as many media outlets have obituaries ready. They haven’t published it yet for a very good reason. He’s still alive.
I can highly recommend Andrew O’Hagan’s long article on the procession of dodgy characters at the BBC, going back at least to 1940. Any number of famous and lovable National Treasures merited a ferocious obituary.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v34/n21/andrew-o-hagan/light-entertainment
I entirely agree with Mr Smallman and with J Bryant that people’s lives (those that are in the public eye, anyway) should not simply be brushed under the carpet. Rolf Harris had worked for the BBC for 4 or 5 decades as an entertainer before his crimes were unmasked.
As the article has already said, an obit was published in the BMJ of Harold Shipman, whose multiple murders heavily eclipsed anything he did as a practising doctor. And with Myra Hindley, I haven’t actually heard anything good at all said or written about the child murderer.
So, a ‘warts and all’ obituary is not a bad thing, and is I believe very informative to the public. And the BBC should be there to inform us. The BBC did publish an obituary of Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall, but are probably getting embarrassed that one of their own presenters was not unmasked much sooner regarding their conduct to the British public.
One of my favourite wind ups, especially when on trains, or in pubs, is to have a Rolf Harris song or Jim ‘ll fix it theme as my phone ring tone….Creates a wall of tut tut po faces!!!
One of my favourite wind ups, especially when on trains, or in pubs, is to have a Rolf Harris song or Jim ‘ll fix it theme as my phone ring tone….Creates a wall of tut tut po faces!!!
The Times ran a thorough and well-balanced obituary on Rolf yesterday.
The Times ran a thorough and well-balanced obituary on Rolf yesterday.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, the standard work on the lives of noted Britons, has always included the notorious – the Krays, the Moors Murderers, Shipman, others convicted of murder, the Great Train Robbers, etc. (It only includes the dead.) As well as those known only for villainy, and in their lifetimes, it includes people thought during their lives, or most of their lives, to be innocuous and indeed benevolent: Cyril Smith, Harris, Savile (and do please note how to spell his name!). I don’t doubt it will have an entry on Harris, and so it should.
The numerous obituaries after the demise of Canon Brian Brindley made side-splitting reading. Sadly I think that the funniest of them all (“The Last Supper” by Damian Thompson) may be buried behind a pay wall. Part of the joy was the numerous small discrepancies. Between which two sumptuous courses did Brian have his fatal heart attack?
The various writers did not hide Brian’s shortcomings but emphasised the pleasure his Biblical 70 years had brought to so many. I think only one mentioned Brian’s long tunic with its strip of 39 buttons – “one for each of the Articles I don’t believe in”.
https://johnthelutheran.tumblr.com/post/113598317586/so-ive-been-reading-up-on-canon-brian-brindley
What ‘important lessons’ are we supposed to learn from ghastly grinning, jolly outgoing public favourites who turn out to be child molesters? There have been no shortage of them Rolf Harris, Jimmy Saville, Cyril Smith, Stuart Hall…
That conspicuous charity work coupled with a genial personality provides not merely a halo but effective armour perhaps?
The most important lesson, as J Bryant writes, is to remind us that good and bad are mixed together in people. Rolf, being a local, was one of the mainstays of local television, not long after it came to Perth. We saw a lot of Rolf and saw a very warm, funny, talented person.
It seemed to me that Harris was a very ‘touchy, feely’ person who enjoyed giving and receiving affection physically. Perhaps his ego meant that he couldn’t really see that what was a pleasure for him wasn’t necessarily so for others. Young people, in those times, could be disregarded as not yet fully ‘people’, and were relatively powerless. As we know, what Harris was doing was much more widespread than we knew at the time, it just wasn’t talked about because anything to do with sex was not a polite subject. If only his victims had been able to tell someone, he might not have gotten away with it for so long.
But part of the Harris story is his talent and charisma as well as his failings.
Anything to do with sex not a polite subject?! These were not Victorian times! I don’t know what your adolescence was like but when I was at secondary school in the mid-sixties very many of my classmates were already sexually active – and rude, crude and knowing in their language! This was a small-town home counties school, by the way, not some tough inner city hellhole.
It has been noted by others, not just me, that the do-good aura bestowed by charity work was a major factor shielding Jimmy Saville, the very brutal Cyril Smith and Harris himself from scrutiny as well as giving them access to youngsters. The easy outgoing personalities of each of these men helped add a disarming air of genial affability. Most people in my experience are poor judges of character (though they might flatter themselves otherwise) and will look no further than the most superficial personality traits when assessing a person.
I think what Russell Hamilton was trying to say about the subject of sex was that touching people in a “friendly” was more accepted in the sixties and seventies than it is now. For example, about thirty years ago or so I might have tapped a waitress on the shoulder while thanking her and saying ‘bye after a restaurant meal, but I wouldn’t dream of doing so now as I know it is socially unacceptable.
Yes, many people were “sexually active” at the secondary school where I went, too, but they didn’t necessarily talked about it at the time. Some of us heard these stories many years later!
It depends upon background. Those who grew up slums or worked in rough areas such as docks had to learn to judge character very quickly. Also men need to be tough enough to face up to people like Saville. Several people said Saville intimidated them into silence. The BBC and entertainment industry do not employ the sort of tough men who workd in mines, steel mills, shipyards, trawlers, construction sites, demolition gangs, docks , etc who would have realised what Saville was up to and beaten him to an inch of his life.
Canny barristers do their utmost to ensure sexual cases are not heard in the East End of London because people take a far dimmer view of such crimes than in the West End.
SAVILE!!!
SAVILE!!!
Well said, but see above comment on the spelling of SAVILE.
I think what Russell Hamilton was trying to say about the subject of sex was that touching people in a “friendly” was more accepted in the sixties and seventies than it is now. For example, about thirty years ago or so I might have tapped a waitress on the shoulder while thanking her and saying ‘bye after a restaurant meal, but I wouldn’t dream of doing so now as I know it is socially unacceptable.
Yes, many people were “sexually active” at the secondary school where I went, too, but they didn’t necessarily talked about it at the time. Some of us heard these stories many years later!
It depends upon background. Those who grew up slums or worked in rough areas such as docks had to learn to judge character very quickly. Also men need to be tough enough to face up to people like Saville. Several people said Saville intimidated them into silence. The BBC and entertainment industry do not employ the sort of tough men who workd in mines, steel mills, shipyards, trawlers, construction sites, demolition gangs, docks , etc who would have realised what Saville was up to and beaten him to an inch of his life.
Canny barristers do their utmost to ensure sexual cases are not heard in the East End of London because people take a far dimmer view of such crimes than in the West End.
Well said, but see above comment on the spelling of SAVILE.
He will be judged by the Court of King Caractacus…
Anything to do with sex not a polite subject?! These were not Victorian times! I don’t know what your adolescence was like but when I was at secondary school in the mid-sixties very many of my classmates were already sexually active – and rude, crude and knowing in their language! This was a small-town home counties school, by the way, not some tough inner city hellhole.
It has been noted by others, not just me, that the do-good aura bestowed by charity work was a major factor shielding Jimmy Saville, the very brutal Cyril Smith and Harris himself from scrutiny as well as giving them access to youngsters. The easy outgoing personalities of each of these men helped add a disarming air of genial affability. Most people in my experience are poor judges of character (though they might flatter themselves otherwise) and will look no further than the most superficial personality traits when assessing a person.
He will be judged by the Court of King Caractacus…
I think you may be missing the point.
An obituary should not be viewed as some sort of prize or endorsement, but a record of someone who did something signficant – whether good, bad or (in almost all cases) some mix of both.
If we succumb to this neo-puritan desire for airbrushing and censorship, there’s no end to the slipper slope until no one has an obituary.
Just as with BLM and the Bristol harbour statue, rewriting history (or even just filtering it) will have the opposite effect to what it is claimed to do. Hiding and suppressing information denies people in future the opportunity to learn and perhaps even form their own opinions.
This matters because received opinion can drift backwards and forwards over time. If this sort of censorship had been going on 200 years ago, we wouldn’t know about some people who were not rated at the time and now are. Sometimes the same people who are cited by campaigners to now erase those who were rated 200 years ago !
“If we succumb to this neo-puritan desire”(!)
A little grandiose maybe? But behind your quasi-lofty thinking lies the most banal of sentiments: “There’s good and bad in all people.”
Anyway, Mr Smallman says:
More than a mere obituary and certainly not a hagiography – but I guess the BBC would rather just say little and move on, hoping public forget (which they surely will).
Instead of just asking: How did Rolf Harris and the others deceive us all? we should ask: Why is this type of character able to deceive so many, so easily?
And that’s precisely why we shouldn’t try to brush it under the carpet.
I suspect we’re actually pretty much in agreement on this (even if you don’t like how I’m saying it).
There’s another question we might ask about people like Rolf Harris: was it possible that we could have kept all the good stuff he did do and avoided the really bad stuff if he’d been better managed and controlled ? Or do we just have to try to identify such people and keep them out of public life completely ? I don’t know. But it’s a question the BBC should be asking themselves. There’s no doubt that Rolf Harris did do some valuable and positive things.
The BBC is increasingly “news by omission”. In the old days, before they started taking sides on everything they didn’t do this.
OK, one last comment – away from the obituary question: I’m old enough to remember the BBC of the 1960s and early 70s generally sounding like the voice of the British establishment. In fact it was known that a good classical education (Latin, Greek and all that) would help a young aspirant begin a career in television.
That began to change as the British establishment became increasingly staffed by Left-liberal baby-boomers – while remaining as patronising and paternal as ever – letting the rest of us know what side a person must take if they wished to be seen as morally sound.
Now of course they continue on the same well-worn paternalistic path with the latest Lefty variant: the Woke agenda.
Excellent point (patronising and paternal). And we end in total agreement on something !
Excellent point (patronising and paternal). And we end in total agreement on something !
OK, one last comment – away from the obituary question: I’m old enough to remember the BBC of the 1960s and early 70s generally sounding like the voice of the British establishment. In fact it was known that a good classical education (Latin, Greek and all that) would help a young aspirant begin a career in television.
That began to change as the British establishment became increasingly staffed by Left-liberal baby-boomers – while remaining as patronising and paternal as ever – letting the rest of us know what side a person must take if they wished to be seen as morally sound.
Now of course they continue on the same well-worn paternalistic path with the latest Lefty variant: the Woke agenda.
And that’s precisely why we shouldn’t try to brush it under the carpet.
I suspect we’re actually pretty much in agreement on this (even if you don’t like how I’m saying it).
There’s another question we might ask about people like Rolf Harris: was it possible that we could have kept all the good stuff he did do and avoided the really bad stuff if he’d been better managed and controlled ? Or do we just have to try to identify such people and keep them out of public life completely ? I don’t know. But it’s a question the BBC should be asking themselves. There’s no doubt that Rolf Harris did do some valuable and positive things.
The BBC is increasingly “news by omission”. In the old days, before they started taking sides on everything they didn’t do this.
I tried to reply Peter B, but my comment is ‘Awaiting approval’ for some reason. It may appear eventually.
Good luck ! I’m sure it will. It seems it’s happening to all of us. Perhaps you aren’t really anyone round here till you get your comments called in at least once a week.
I’m like J Bryant. I just love reading obits – and even books of compiled obits. I think we largely value them for the colour and eccentricities rather than naively believing these people are some sort of example we should copy (trying to avoid that ghastly phrase ‘role models’).
Mark Steyn writes a pretty good obituary – often an unusual take on quite unexpected characters (Madame Chiang Kai Shek for instance). I have a copy of his Passing Parade collection.
Like yourself and J Bryant, I love obituaries. It will be a desperately sad day if they are censored and politically corrected to cautious total tedium. As George Orwell observed, any man who gives a glowing account of his own life is probably lying. And a glowing obituary even of famous religious figures should instantly arouse suspicion. As was the case with “living saints” like Jean Vanier, Mother Teresa, Father Marcial Maciel and the now almost forgotten hero Doctor Thomas Dooley who died in 1961 after a short but hugely acclaimed life.
Mark Steyn writes a pretty good obituary – often an unusual take on quite unexpected characters (Madame Chiang Kai Shek for instance). I have a copy of his Passing Parade collection.
Like yourself and J Bryant, I love obituaries. It will be a desperately sad day if they are censored and politically corrected to cautious total tedium. As George Orwell observed, any man who gives a glowing account of his own life is probably lying. And a glowing obituary even of famous religious figures should instantly arouse suspicion. As was the case with “living saints” like Jean Vanier, Mother Teresa, Father Marcial Maciel and the now almost forgotten hero Doctor Thomas Dooley who died in 1961 after a short but hugely acclaimed life.
Good luck ! I’m sure it will. It seems it’s happening to all of us. Perhaps you aren’t really anyone round here till you get your comments called in at least once a week.
I’m like J Bryant. I just love reading obits – and even books of compiled obits. I think we largely value them for the colour and eccentricities rather than naively believing these people are some sort of example we should copy (trying to avoid that ghastly phrase ‘role models’).
Yes, the obituary isn’t for the benefit of the deceased, but for everyone else.
Your point about statue toppling is a good one too, because history operates just the same.
I hadn’t given any thought to obituaries, or lack thereof, being similar to the removal of historic artifacts. It now appears to me following this article and a couple of the comments, that the same trend to occlude unpleasant elements of history has many faces.
“If we succumb to this neo-puritan desire”(!)
A little grandiose maybe? But behind your quasi-lofty thinking lies the most banal of sentiments: “There’s good and bad in all people.”
Anyway, Mr Smallman says:
More than a mere obituary and certainly not a hagiography – but I guess the BBC would rather just say little and move on, hoping public forget (which they surely will).
Instead of just asking: How did Rolf Harris and the others deceive us all? we should ask: Why is this type of character able to deceive so many, so easily?
I tried to reply Peter B, but my comment is ‘Awaiting approval’ for some reason. It may appear eventually.
Yes, the obituary isn’t for the benefit of the deceased, but for everyone else.
Your point about statue toppling is a good one too, because history operates just the same.
I hadn’t given any thought to obituaries, or lack thereof, being similar to the removal of historic artifacts. It now appears to me following this article and a couple of the comments, that the same trend to occlude unpleasant elements of history has many faces.
I might have more faith in your knowledge of Jimmy SAVILE if you could spell his name right!
The most important lesson, as J Bryant writes, is to remind us that good and bad are mixed together in people. Rolf, being a local, was one of the mainstays of local television, not long after it came to Perth. We saw a lot of Rolf and saw a very warm, funny, talented person.
It seemed to me that Harris was a very ‘touchy, feely’ person who enjoyed giving and receiving affection physically. Perhaps his ego meant that he couldn’t really see that what was a pleasure for him wasn’t necessarily so for others. Young people, in those times, could be disregarded as not yet fully ‘people’, and were relatively powerless. As we know, what Harris was doing was much more widespread than we knew at the time, it just wasn’t talked about because anything to do with sex was not a polite subject. If only his victims had been able to tell someone, he might not have gotten away with it for so long.
But part of the Harris story is his talent and charisma as well as his failings.
I think you may be missing the point.
An obituary should not be viewed as some sort of prize or endorsement, but a record of someone who did something signficant – whether good, bad or (in almost all cases) some mix of both.
If we succumb to this neo-puritan desire for airbrushing and censorship, there’s no end to the slipper slope until no one has an obituary.
Just as with BLM and the Bristol harbour statue, rewriting history (or even just filtering it) will have the opposite effect to what it is claimed to do. Hiding and suppressing information denies people in future the opportunity to learn and perhaps even form their own opinions.
This matters because received opinion can drift backwards and forwards over time. If this sort of censorship had been going on 200 years ago, we wouldn’t know about some people who were not rated at the time and now are. Sometimes the same people who are cited by campaigners to now erase those who were rated 200 years ago !
I might have more faith in your knowledge of Jimmy SAVILE if you could spell his name right!
What ‘important lessons’ are we supposed to learn from ghastly grinning, jolly outgoing public favourites who turn out to be child molesters? There have been no shortage of them Rolf Harris, Jimmy Saville, Cyril Smith, Stuart Hall…
That conspicuous charity work coupled with a genial personality provides not merely a halo but effective armour perhaps?