Death of an obit writer (1)

"Terrence, it's Gary from The Times. Bit of a strange one for you, we'd like you to write an obituary for Neville Hartness."

"The Obit writer?"

"Yes, well we can't very well ask him to write his own obituary can we?"

"I see your point. I've never written an obit, but I've read plenty. I don't mind giving it a go. It's not urgent is it?"

"Oh no, not at all. If we could have it by Tuesday that should be fine."

"Tuesday? I thought you could write these things years in advance."

"Yes, usually, unfortunately Neville's unwell. A terminal illness, I'm afraid to say. Of course it's not stopping him working, you know Neville, 'I'll write about the dead until I'm dead'. Don't get me wrong, the prognosis is that he could live for six months to a year, but you can never be sure in this game. To be frank it was a bit of a shock to us when we realised we didn't have an obit ready. The problem is that Neville's been so reliable over the years we've never had to use anybody else, so we've never had an obit written for him, yet he's our longest serving writer by a long way. Over forty years now. Neville's written obits for the rest of us, of course, he says some lovely things about me."

"Forty years, wow. I'll probably need a few quotes from fellow journalists, if you don't mind. Could you let me have a couple of numbers?"

"Of course. You can start with me. I'll email you a quote, that'll be easier. I'll include a few contacts in the email."

"Thanks for thinking of me," I said. Not to be heartless, but if Neville was nearing the end of his career this was a real opportunity to pitch for his job. I wasn't short of work, but journalism is a fickle industry, make the mistake of reporting some catastrophic error by the government and you could suddenly find yourself unemployable outside the Guardian, and nobody wants to be reduced to writing for the Guardian. Next thing you know you've become Polly Toynbee, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

I received the email a few minutes later with, as promised, a nice quote from Gary and a spread of contacts plus links to some of his most famous obituaries.

I set to work, phoning and emailing requests for quotes, skimming through a spread of obits and writing the hard facts; age, time at the Times, a summary of his life in two lines. With these out of the way I started to experiment with ways of writing the main prose. I realised that this was my one chance to impress, so I dedicated the entire next two days to getting it written to the highest quality possible.

I finished the obit on Monday, but rather than just email it in, I decided to use the opportunity to the fullest, and called into the Times' offices.

"I hope you don't mind," I said to Gary, "I was just working around the corner and thought it would be easier to make changes."

"No problem at all Terrence, it's good to see you. It's been a while. I'll introduce you to Nancy Hoggarth, she'll be knocking the obit into shape so that it's ready to go, then we can pop out to lunch."

Lunch with Gary Fanhirst was the journalistic equivalent as an audience with the pope. No, that's not true, closer to an audience with God himself. Let's face it, everyone's met the pope.