Duncan's Funeral

I set out to make Dunk's funeral a celebration of what it was about him that we loved, not a statement of his untimely death. It was an event like no other. But then he was a person like no other.

If you were there and you'd like to add your thoughts on Duncan's funeral, please email me, and I'll add them. I'd also like any additional photos if people have them.

I've included a few details of the funeral, his coffin, and the music that we played on this page. It should give you an idea of what we did if you weren't able to be there, or provide a reminder of a moment that we shared if you were there.

Arrangements

As with most things to do with Duncan, he made it entirely clear what it was he didn't like. Sometimes he'd forget to tell you what it was he actually liked, so you had to fill in the gaps.

Although we didn't get a chance to discuss it before he died, my brief for his funeral was quite clear. No religion. Nobody talking about him that hadn't met him. No curled up sandwiches in a scary cremside pub. No dress code. No mowing the Netherlands for flowers. That didn't leave me with a lot to go on.

Dunk was nuts about skiing, although we never actually got to go that often. I did manage to fulfil one of his wishes, which was to go skiing on his birthday (in August, in New Zealand). His only comment regarding his funeral was that it was to be held in Lake Louise in Canada, with me skiing naked down a mountain followed by mourners holding candles and his coffin on a sledge.

Given the constraints of time, budget, legality and wanting to balance the needs of his friends, his family and his colleagues - plus my rather rusty technique - naked skiing was a non-starter.

Coffins by email

I started off with the idea of a purple coffin, which led me on an Internet search for something a bit different. I eventually found a company that did what I wanted, and found the most amazing funeral directors for whom peculiarity was no barrier. Following some initial discussions revolving around whether they could email the coffin proofs to my tent on Shell Island, we managed to come up with a design that he would have been absolutely delighted with.

I was determined that I wanted to celebrate his life and not focus on his death. The coffin was bordered with snowy mountains, a passion of his. I added a frieze of a hundred pictures of him that celebrated the nine years in which he'd made the most of every day since his first diagnosis with a brain tumour in 2000.

You can find the pictures from his coffin here, although you'll have to be a bit patient as my connection is quite slow.

On the lid, we had a picture of him smiling at his fortieth birthday, a milestone he'd secretly never expected to reach, and had never dared to hope for.

At the end of his coffin, I put a picture of the Lake Louise ski lodge. I did promise him that his ashes would be scattered on the mountain above the lodge, and I will keep that promise to him.

I also added a few pictures of his favourite things. A lambbanana. A tiny snowman. Britannia, his motorhome and refuge from being forced to go camping. Shell Island, where he felt most comfortable. A house in the middle of cumbria with neighbours five miles away. His trip on Concorde.

Putting the fun into funeral

I turned to Loaf, my local expert in amateur dramatics (he's witnessed more of those from his friends than anyone else I know). After I asked that he said a few words to open the funeral, the full horror of my "oh, we can just make it up as we go along" suggestion struck him, and he got roped into producing the entire event for me.

Dunk adored loaf, and would brighten up immensely when he went for a fiddle with loaf's honker and dinger. Much of the silliness of the funeral was inspired by Dunk's madcap 40th flashmob birthday, where we descended on random unsuspecting hosts with a minature cake, a balloon and a glove puppet.

Loaf's horror was compounded when the funeral directors burst in and said "We've got great news! There's been a cancellation!". After the chorus of "How on earth do you get a cancellation at a crematorium?" died down, I realised that having an hour to properly conduct a funeral is essential. Take it from me, never settle for less. Fortunately for loaf, I didn't expand the event to a full 72 hour state occasion.

The funeral procession

Given the logistics of our flat being on a city centre roundabout, there was no practical way of conducting a traditional funeral. I asked Dunk's mum and dad to walk through the park with me down to the river and throw flowers off the bridge, where at Dunk's dads suggestion, we played pooh sticks with them. Then the limousine arrived and we met up with the hearse and Britannia.

Chester came to a standstill as we drove through, with people stopping and looking at the coffin. It was a very strange experience. We drove on to the crematorium, accompanied by an old-fashioned VW camper van belonging to one of the staff at the funeral directors.

Tributes

We had a number of tributes from close family and friends. Loaf, me, Rob Evans from JANET-yuk, our friends Rocky and Rosemary, and Dunk's dad and sister. I have to say that I was such a bag of nerves during the funeral that I don't remember it all in great detail, but I hope that between us, we managed to convey how special Dunk was to all of us. Certainly, hearing people speak, you couldn't miss the love and pride that we felt towards Duncan and how devastated we were at the loss of somebody that meant so much to everyone that knew him.

If anyone had asked Duncan how they should dress or behave at the funeral, he'd have shrugged and said "do what you bloody well want". Duncan was a lot of things to a lot of people, but above all, he hated conformity and convention. Once, in the Royal Festival Hall, he refused to stand to sing the national anthem after the Queen Mother had died. "I hated the cow", he remarked loudly, with his arms firmly folded. The glove puppet revue, the balloons, high vis and hard hats as well as loaf getting out his honker to signal to the crematorium staff were very much part of that side of him.

Of course, the biggest tribute was the number of people who'd came from all over the country just to be there to say goodbye to him. I know I didn't get to spend a lot of time with the people who arrived, but I'm overwhelmed by all the support and I hope to get round everyone once the dust settles and thank them properly. Duncan would have been horrified that so many people gave up their time to come, but profoundly touched by the fact that they did.

Music

We held a yoo-tubestorming session with Dunk's Mum and Dad where we collected together the music that we were considering playing at the funeral to see how it all fitted together. The piece from fascinating aida was very kindly rushed to us by their agent after loaf rang to ask for emergency comedy, then extracted from the sorting office at speed just prior to my departure for Shell Island. I also had a crash course in splicing music in itunes after we discovered the limited range of options for playing the tracks involved a single CD or a pile of cassettes.

Once a management consultant, always a management consultant. I did bring a portable CD player, spare batteries and four copies of the music just in case.

One of Dunk's passions was TV themes and station idents. If there'd been time to construct a video wall at Blacon Crematorium, there'd have been a lot more.
Dressed in high-vis and a cowboy hat, my usual camping gear, I walked next to Dunk's coffin with his sister and his brothers as it entered the crematorium to the tune of Ski Sunday. God knows what the under 30's at the service thought I was up to.

The last night out we had before Dunk died was to see the Fascinating Aida silver jubilee concert in Llandudno. Their promotional flyer says "See them before you die otherwise your life will have been meaningless". I'm so glad we did. It was the last time he really got to relax, and watching him roll around in laughter to Tesco Saves brought back memories of all the happy times we've shared.
He'd have been in hysterics at the impromptu glove puppet display that Loaf and I put on when it was played at the funeral. There isn't a youtube version, but click on the picture for a short excerpt from Amazon. Remember. Jesus saves, but Tesco saves you more!

Dunk sat aghast during the last night of Thames TV on New Years Eve 1992, and cried his way through the final montage that they played. He'd regularly play the clip years afterwards and it always brought tears to his eyes. I've linked to The Tourists version here, but if you want to see the actual Thames finale, click here
It's a lovely song and an appropriate sentiment. I'm also firmly of the belief that you can't have too much Annie Lennox at a funeral.

Dunk had a quiet and a very private side. When he was upset or unhappy, or if he just needed to get away from people, he would simply disappear and go and listen to music.
It's part of the incredible inner strength that he had, and you rarely saw him upset or angry, even when his body was beginning to fail.
Chasing Cars was a song he loved, and he'd sent an excerpt from it to his sister as a ringtone. It was an emotional song for his family and a chance for shared reflection on just what a loss Dunk's death will be for all of us.
It certainly doesn't get much more raw than this, and it gave us all a moment to just sit with Duncan before he left us for the last time.

I had known for many years that he wanted Walking on the Milky Way to be played at his funeral. As I had requested that the curtains wouldn't be closed during the ceremony, it was during this song that his friends, family and colleagues gathered around his coffin to pay tribute to a truly remarkable man.
With his life displayed around the outside of the coffin, it was very special to me to see people gather and remember him as he was, full of life and always with a smile in his eyes. I knew at that point that I'd done the job I'd set out to do.
The video to this song is gorgeous. I can't play it any more without crying my eyes out.

When Dunk was learning to ski, Blondie's Maria was blasting incessantly from tinny speakers outside the ski lodge at Lake Louise. It was a song that always made him smile and reminded him of all the good times that we'd had over the years. He'd lose himself dancing to it when it came on in any club. It was the right song for him to hear as we left. I included this one for him. He deserves only happy memories now.

In the pub

We moved on to the Bear and Billet after the funeral, one of Chester's most beautiful and quirky pubs. That was definitely a celebration of his life, and the first time that we'd ever got so many of his friends and family together at once. I read out a few tributes from our friends round the world that were too far away to be there, even if I managed to say that Anne would "never forgive him" rather than "never forget him". Mind you, knowing Anne...

People ate, chatted, drank, and finally drifted away home. It really was the perfect end to a day of laughter and tears which was filled with such sadness, but also such love.

	One of Dunk's passions was TV themes and station idents. If there'd been time to construct a video wall at Blacon Crematorium, there'd have been a lot more. Dressed in high-vis and a cowboy hat, my usual camping gear, I walked next to Dunk's coffin with his sister and his brothers as it entered the crematorium to the tune of Ski Sunday. God knows what the under 30's at the service thought I was up to.
	The last night out we had before Dunk died was to see the Fascinating Aida silver jubilee concert in Llandudno. Their promotional flyer says "See them before you die otherwise your life will have been meaningless". I'm so glad we did. It was the last time he really got to relax, and watching him roll around in laughter to Tesco Saves brought back memories of all the happy times we've shared. He'd have been in hysterics at the impromptu glove puppet display that Loaf and I put on when it was played at the funeral. There isn't a youtube version, but click on the picture for a short excerpt from Amazon. Remember. Jesus saves, but Tesco saves you more!
	Dunk sat aghast during the last night of Thames TV on New Years Eve 1992, and cried his way through the final montage that they played. He'd regularly play the clip years afterwards and it always brought tears to his eyes. I've linked to The Tourists version here, but if you want to see the actual Thames finale, click here It's a lovely song and an appropriate sentiment. I'm also firmly of the belief that you can't have too much Annie Lennox at a funeral.
	Dunk had a quiet and a very private side. When he was upset or unhappy, or if he just needed to get away from people, he would simply disappear and go and listen to music. It's part of the incredible inner strength that he had, and you rarely saw him upset or angry, even when his body was beginning to fail. Chasing Cars was a song he loved, and he'd sent an excerpt from it to his sister as a ringtone. It was an emotional song for his family and a chance for shared reflection on just what a loss Dunk's death will be for all of us. It certainly doesn't get much more raw than this, and it gave us all a moment to just sit with Duncan before he left us for the last time.
	I had known for many years that he wanted Walking on the Milky Way to be played at his funeral. As I had requested that the curtains wouldn't be closed during the ceremony, it was during this song that his friends, family and colleagues gathered around his coffin to pay tribute to a truly remarkable man. With his life displayed around the outside of the coffin, it was very special to me to see people gather and remember him as he was, full of life and always with a smile in his eyes. I knew at that point that I'd done the job I'd set out to do. The video to this song is gorgeous. I can't play it any more without crying my eyes out.
	When Dunk was learning to ski, Blondie's Maria was blasting incessantly from tinny speakers outside the ski lodge at Lake Louise. It was a song that always made him smile and reminded him of all the good times that we'd had over the years. He'd lose himself dancing to it when it came on in any club. It was the right song for him to hear as we left. I included this one for him. He deserves only happy memories now.