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[]{},./<>?;’#:@~!”£$%^&*()_+1234567890-=ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz * * * * * * * * * 34 | * * * WEDNESDAY, JUNE 20, 2007 THE DAILY TELEGRAPH Hilary TV Review the top shows of the year with FEATURES our unique video coverage telegraph.co.uk/hilarytv Bernard Manning, who died this week, pre-empted his critics by writing his own obituary. Here, three Telegraph writers take an irreverent leaf out of his book My.Telegraph.co.uk The Telegraph’s reader community is a place for you to create your own 1C@G<NO online newspaper, start a blog, post pictures and join debates. And all for free. So flexible is My.Telegraph that it can also serve as a digital resting place for your assessment of your G<PBCAMJH life and how you lived it — your auto-obituary. So, whatever your age, young or old, follow the easy instructions below to write one. It will survive long after you are no longer around =@TJI? yourself. If you are already a member of My.Telegraph, just write a blog in the normal way and tag it ‘‘Obits’’. If you haven’t joined the thousands from across the world OC@BM<Q@ who’ve already signed up, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to take part: 1. Go to www.my.telegraph.co.uk and came back from America Hugh Massingberd, took over click on ‘‘Sign Up’’. yesterday to a flurry the page. 2. Fill in the first page of the of Bernard Manning Massingberd’s genius was registration form and then click on obituaries, and to discover to discard the view that obits ‘‘I accept. Create my account’’. that he had taken the should be expanded Who’s 3. Fill in the second page of the form. Iapproach – novel here Who entries, dry as dust, This will help others find you later. but more common there devoted only to the Great and 4. Click on “Write your first post”. – of trying to write his own. the Good of the Establishment 5. Write your obituary — you can do it I’d been at an obituaries and, above all, never speaking in stages if you prefer. conference in upstate New ill of the dead. Instead, 6. Preview what you’ve written. If York, where the question Telegraph obits began to cover you wish, add an image of yourself. of what makes a good obit all sorts of people and began Click on “Tag” and tag your obituary was endlessly dissected. to write about what they ate, ‘‘Obits’’. Manning’s piece was a nice their hobbies, anything that 7. Now click on ‘‘Publish’’. enough read in its way, seemed to encapsulate an Þ Your obituary will now be live on but it wasn’t what British aspect of their life. And death My.Telegraph. You can edit it as many readers would regard as became lively. times as you like. And other members a proper obituary. Other British papers, and of the community will be able to To take one small point, the better American ones, comment on what you have written. Manning never mentioned followed suit. But many still the umpteen factual details tend to turn an obituary into If you want to read your friends’ – his date of birth, his wife, a funeral eulogy or a piece of auto-obituaries, search for them his son – which an obituary, justification for the subject. under ‘‘People’’. Or go to the top as a matter of record, needs to That is why autobiographical right of the My.Telegraph home page have. Manning’s piece is not pieces, though they may have and look for ‘‘Obits’’ in the light-blue entirely without precedent: their own value, will not do as section under ‘‘Today people are our obituary of the Soho the final word. JEFF GILBERT writing about’’. drinker and writer Jeffrey The obituary is the first draft About life, not death: Bernard Manning’s self-penned obituary omitted certain key facts, such as his date of birth and background details Bernard was followed by an of history, which is why the “add” which he had written circumstances of a death and himself. It was funny and the tributes are elsewhere, on rather charming. But it would the news pages. The qualities SAM LEITH ‘HE PRETENDED NOT TO HAVE GONE TO ETON’ never have done for the for a good obituarist include main obituary. Olympian detachment and The obituaries in The omniscience, coupled with am Leith, who died Leith. He grew up in Surrey fledgling Ephraim Hardcastle “When I did diaries,” he said, diminished figure. He Daily Telegraph are not the ability to make a telling aged 33 last month after and was a King’s Scholar column. The sobriquet “all the writers I admired communicated with friends death notices, written by the judgment: that is one reason Sa short illness, was a at Eton College, where he he acquired there, “Sam told me to **** off. Now they only via the internet and families, as they often are why the Telegraph’s are journalist and writer who developed an interest in Sneed”, combining as it does still hate me, but they are seldom left his flat, confining in America. Nor is the obits unsigned. An obituary should squandered the promise suicidal American poets. “sneer” and “snide” with the nice to me at parties.” his expeditions to Brixton’s beat any longer the stamping combine ruthless examination of his early career in a He was known by his suggestion of a Dickensian He published his only Atlantic Road, where he ground of the cub reporter. of the facts and scrupulous succession of dingy pubs, contemporaries as “Gollum” scrivener’s clerk, stuck. It book, Dead Pets (Canongate), was typically seen “wearing That may be why American accuracy in reporting, with and his modest literary or “Toady”, insults he took served him well through the in 2005. An anthology of odd slippers and muttering obituaries can be terrible, an eye for the telling detail talents on a toilet book. Six in good part. He went on to five years he was to spend interesting information about about hammers”. He passed while ours are routinely or the funny story that tells months before his death, he study English at Magdalen as a gossip columnist. He animal mortality designed to Anything Eat Wasps? (Profile, his time watching television regarded as among the best- you something about the was described by his closest College, Oxford, where he joined The Daily Telegraph in hit the Christmas gift market, 2005) began to affect his and submitting unsolicited written, most entertaining deceased’s character. They’re friend as “a complete waste pretended as far as possible 1999, where he remained for it was a moderate critical judgment, and in 2007 he was reviews of imaginary novels and most popular sections about life, after all, not death. of space”. not to have gone to Eton. the rest of his professional success but failed to sell. dismissed from the Telegraph to the London Review of the newspaper. But they Leith was born on January He joined Fleet Street career. Retitled in paperback, Daddy, for gross misconduct. of Books. weren’t always. The obituaries Andrew McKie 1, 1974 in London, eldest from university in 1997, He was thought to have Is Timmy in Heaven Now? In later years, as his Owing perhaps to his revolution was begun by this Obituaries Editor son of the writer Penny and cut his teeth assisting been happiest in his early (Canongate, 2006) also failed fondness for Scotch whisky increasing eccentricities, newspaper in 1986 when Junor and the restaurateur his great mentor Peter thirties, when he worked as to sell. Leith’s pathological gave way to a love affair with Leith never married. He is my predecessor, the saintly Obituaries: Page 27 and jigsaw magnate James McKay on the Daily Mail’s the Telegraph’s literary editor. hatred of the authors of Does Brasso, he cut a somewhat survived by his cat, Henry. CRAIG BROWN ‘SPENT MOST OF HIS LIFE IN PYJAMAS’ raig Brown began life, he poked fun at the use, recycling them in writing jokes aged famous behind their backs. parodic form. Cnine at his prep school, He wrote his first parody Early in his career, he Farleigh House. It was the of the playwright Harold discovered that humour perfect environment for a Pinter aged 14, and was requires minimal research particular form of English still writing parodies of – the less, the better – so humour: the headmaster him some 36 years later. Brown was able to trot out always wore the school His parodies were not five or six articles a week uniform (Start-rite sandals, always taken in good part. for some decades. Every grey flannel shorts, Aertex “Is that who I think it is?” now and then he would get shirt) and the music master Pinter once said to a party out his scissors and paste, used to transport his hostess, spying him across bundle the least timeworn wheelchair-bound girlfriend a busy room. of these old articles to school by attaching a “Why? Do you want to the pop music weeklies, an together, dream up a title rope from her wheelchair to punch him?” asked the unhealthy interest in the suggestive of novelty, and his car. hostess. five-times-a-week goings- have them republished in With his friend Charlie “I wouldn’t want to dirty on at ATV’s Crossroads book form. Alas, the public Miller, who later went to my fists,” scowled Pinter. Motel, an early stint saw through this deceitful work for the BBC, he spent Others who voiced their at autograph hunting ruse, and consistently his free time mimicking the disapproval, sometimes (Derek Nimmo, Engelbert refused to buy them.

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