Just goes to show you can’t keep an opinionated octogenarian down - case in point: Winston Peters, in the ring since 1979 and spry as ever, shuffling in his shorts, jabbing the air, waiting for the bell announcing round 12.
"Don’t speak ill of the dead" comes from the Latin phrase De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est: "Of the dead nothing but good is to be said". This proverb has been traced to Chilon of Sparta in 600BC.The idea is that the dead can’t hurt us anymore, so they deserve to be left in peace. Our cultural attitudes to death and mourning offer no space for criticising someone who has died.
But the dead can still hurt us. Especially if their bad deeds went unpunished and they end up having a school named after them, or a hospital.
Look at Jimmy Saville, buried with all the honours of a Catholic saint, only to be hastily disinterred in the middle of the night when the scandal broke. Perhaps the BBC should have listened to the people speaking ill of him when he was alive.
I’ve met a lot of people in the course of my writing career and life. Politicians, artists, sportspeople, entrepreneurs ... I’ve even met a murderer (just the one, I hope). Of the people who weren’t murderers, the worst person I’ve ever met must be about 109 by now. A real bathplug; sexist, racist, always delivering outrageous asides in a capering "hardi-har-har" manner followed by a quick, faux-shocked "Goodness, I hope you didn’t think I meant ... ". He’s gotten away with it for so long because people are too surprised (did he really just say that?) and too polite to punch a senior citizen.
I’m betting anything that when he dies, people will bang on about his service to the community and not one person will be honest and say, "Actually, he was a rotten old d..., and rather than late lamented, we lament that it was so late in coming".
When German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld died, the commentary was, er, balanced. He was hailed as a legend and genius by fashion critics, but also decried as a "ruthless, fat-phobic misogynist" and as a fur-loving nemesis of animals by Peta.
Brutally honest obituaries are few but there has been a refreshing wind change, for example the blistering obituary of United States mother Kathleen Dehmlow, written by her children and chronicling the passing of a matriarch "who will not be missed", leaving the world "a better place without her".
Leslie Ray Charping of Texas was an unkind man whose obituary pulled no punches.
"Leslie was surprisingly intelligent, however, he lacked ambition and motivation to do anything more than be reckless, wasteful ... Leslie’s hobbies included being abusive to his family and expediting trips to heaven for the beloved family pets."
Most of us wouldn’t want our dirty laundry aired after we die, so treat the dead as we want to be treated. Saying nice if untrue things about the dead is form of insurance. If we refrain from honesty, so shall others upon our passing. But it’s the kind of phoney that drove Holden Caufield to despair.
I don’t care what people may say about me after I’m gone; I won’t be there to hear it, and it will all be true anyway. I really did save that baby from a burning building. When it comes to eulogies, I think there is room for a balance between blowing smoke up your cadaver and free-range honesty.
I once met a woman whose will stipulated that she be stuffed and mounted in the corner of her lover’s living room, as a lesson to the women who came after her. Just so we’re clear on my own funeral expectations, I’d like a swim-up bar and speeches to be kept to a minimum.
"She’s dead, we checked," will suffice, and no doubt reassure anyone who’s sitting there worried I might sit up and start talking.
