Posted 8/28/2012 02:06:00 PM by Douglas

The reason the obituaries in The London Telegraph changed the way obituaries were written: this guy:

But above all the credit for coming up with a page upon which so many people wish to appear, even if they know they will never see the result themselves, must lie with former Telegraph staffer Hugh Massingberd. He entirely recast the paper’s obituaries in 1986, championing the illuminating anecdote over the dusty details of the curriculum vitae. His insatiable thirst for the Wodehousian character sketch, underpinned by what his own obituary (he died in 2007) described as an “encyclopedic knowledge”, has been the model for each of his successors.

His obit here.

Labels: Telegraph Obits

Posted 9/15/2009 12:09:00 PM by Douglas

R.I.P, Patrick Swayze. This sketch is mainly Farley, but it wouldn't have worked without Swayze:




And then there's this, his Obit from the Telegraph. Don't miss out on the double negative:

An investigation later concluded that the drink had not been not in the cabin but stashed in external storage compartments that were inaccessible in flight; and that Swayze's behaviour was due to the effects of hypoxia during descent.

I'm sure that was not not a factor in the crash.

Labels: Telegraph Obits

Posted 8/17/2009 08:43:00 PM by Douglas

The Telegraph nails another fascinating obituary.

Hugh Millais, who has died aged 79, wafted genially through life – sailing around the Caribbean in his own yacht as a calypso singer; starting an ambitious house building scheme in Spain; and appearing in two of Robert Altman's films – without ever having to suffer the indignity of full-time employment.

I like his recipe for a great life:

Hugh Millais summed up his recipe for life: "75 years, 0 hours of labour, 40,000 bottles of wine, a pinch of Song, Women (to taste). Sozzle gently over a low lifestyle, leave to marinade slowly, bring to fruition. Garnish the whole thing wildly in the telling."

Top that, workin' suckers.

Labels: Telegraph Obits

Posted 1/22/2009 05:34:00 PM by Douglas

Here's an example of why the obituaries in the Telegraph are freakin' gold. Meet Sir Dai Llewellyn:

Good-looking in his youth, with dark Welsh curls, his success with women was famous. He claimed, in his heyday, to be in the habit of going through Queen Charlotte’s Balls “like a dose of salts”. He insisted, though, that he “never got up in the morning and thought, 'I’m going to screw three girls today’.” But: “If it happened, it happened.”

His seduction methods were direct and somewhat lacking in refinement: “I am not one of these oily Italian method-pullers,” he said. “Thirty years, and I still can’t undo a bra. The only trick is that I do not waver. I know what I want and so do they.”

Sounds like a blast, doesn't it? But how did this chap entertain himself during the daylight?

Quite what Llewellyn did by way of a career was never entirely clear.

Boy, that sounds a whole lot better than working your whole life like a stooge. But what does a playboy like this have to say about his first time?

He made up for lost time when he went to study Philosophy at the University of Aix-en-Provence. There he lost his virginity to an older, American woman “who smelt so disgusting that it put me off doing it again for several months”.

Ewww! Americans are stinky!

This sums it up pretty good:

He never grew up. On a visit to South Africa aged 60, he claimed to have fallen through a bedroom floor into a cellar while “attempting to roger a girl called Nettie”, the girlfriend of a friend. “I wish I could tell you this was an isolated incident,” he told a journalist.

This about this when your alarm goes off in the morning.

Labels: Telegraph Obits

Posted 3/22/2008 12:13:00 PM by Douglas

Sir Arthur C. Clarke died last week.

In 1945, while a radar technician with the RAF, Clarke originated the notion of communications satellites, describing in most particulars the machines which control modern telecommunications; he was later to regret that he had not patented the idea (though, as a serving officer, he could not in any case have done so).

I'm disappointed that the Telegraph fails to point out that it's called a geostationary, or "Clarke" orbit.

Labels: Telegraph Obits

Posted 2/29/2008 04:19:00 PM by Douglas

More on Buckley. I like it that The New York Times used the word sesquipedalian in its obit of the man, but if you want the real scoop, you gotta go to the Telegraph. Some highlights:

His spirit began to show at the age of eight, when he wrote King George V a sharp note reminding him of the debts Britain owed the United States for the First World War.

After Millbrook School at Millbrook, New York, where he earned a dollar a page typing up his schoolfriends' essays (with a surcharge of 25c for correcting the grammar as he went) he progressed, in 1943, to the University of Mexico.

Oh, I bet he would correct your grammar like a son-of-bitch. And his most famous quote, from the first edition of National Review:

Buckley started the National Review in 1955, with his own and his wife's money, as an antidote to what he perceived as the dangers of liberal influence on public affairs. The magazine, he declared when setting out his intentions in the first issue, would "stand athwart history yelling 'Stop!'".

But who could forget his heated exchange with Gore Vidal:

He also appeared in a series of television debates during the 1968 Democratic convention with Gore Vidal. The atmosphere often became heated. Vidal, in one programme, called Buckley a "crypto-Nazi", to which Buckley replied: "Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I will sock you in your goddam face."

Too bad he didn't. But you gotta love this comment, and from a Brit, no less:

Constantine Fitzgibbon, in The Daily Telegraph, characterised Buckley - a rich man with no need to work, vigorous and successful in all he undertook - as "what the English used to expect of their aristocrats".

They don't make 'em like that anymore.

Labels: Telegraph Obits

Posted 1/11/2008 05:41:00 PM by Douglas

More stuff on Sir Hillary, KBE. This time, his obit from the Telegraph.

Hillary remained determinedly low-key. "Having paid my respects to the highest mountain in the world," he recalled 46 years later in his autobiography View from the Summit (1999), "I had no choice but to urinate on it." Though he took Tenzing's photograph he did not bother to organise one of himself. And when he met Lowe at Camp VIII on the way down, he delivered the great news in a laconic fashion deemed too shocking for publication at that epoch: "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off."

Sir Hillary, KBE, Original Badass. Read the whole thing, it's worth it. The Daily Telegraph got famous making obituaries readable and interesting, and not like something you read while you're killing time in the barber shop.

Labels: Telegraph Obits

Posted 8/09/2004 05:28:00 PM by Douglas

My dying wish? To have my obituary in The London Telegraph. Or maybe just to be as well written as any obit in a British paper. Those chaps can write an obit, I tell ya. Check out what they've done with Rick James. [Yes, registration is required, but damn worth it!]

Latterly, he had returned to the American public consciousness as the butt of sketches by the comedian Dave Chappelle, whose exclamation "I'm Rick James, bitch!" has become something of a popular catchphrase. James himself had completed his autobiography, Memoirs of a Super Freak; and there has been talk of a film of his life.

Recently he had spoken of his relief at no longer waking up with 10 strange women in his bed, uncertain whether it was day or night on account of the aluminium foil he had taped over the windows. He died in Los Angeles on Friday.

Rick James was twice married and divorced, and is survived by two sons and a daughter.

Relief of no longer waking up with 10 strange women in his bed? And celebrities wonder why we hate them so much. . .

Labels: Telegraph Obits