Farewell to Jeremy Beadle

I said farewell to Jeremy Beadle today.

As a committed Christian I feared a humanist funeral would not sit easy with me, but far from having any feelings of irreverent indignation I found myself totally absorbed by the passion and love in the house for our mutual friend.

Not a cleric in sight and yet this was the most devout and earnest of occasions. Perhaps it wasn’t meant to be, after all, we all knew that Jeremy would not want a sombre atmosphere and God knows speaker after famous speaker reminded us of this, but how does one feel joy when remembering the life of one that was taken from us too early?

I attended the funeral of my old headmaster the other day. John Piper was a great man, a learned man, but he died aged 93, a good age by any standards. He will be missed by many but there can be few remonstrations having lived a full and lengthy life.

Jeremy too was a great man, the most remarkable man I ever knew in fact. The star-studded guest list today paid dutiful homage to his networking skills par excellence but much more than this showed off his supreme diversity of interests as representatives from show business, publishing, sport, commerce, medicine, education and music stood united in their love for a true one-off. Jeremy engendered love wherever he went, I instinctively and quite naturally kissed him on the cheek whenever we met, the only man outside my immediate family I have ever troubled in this manner. He too was a learned man and certainly lived a full life but he died prematurely, aged 59, still having so much ambition and so much to do.

As it happens the occasion turned out to be a great mix of gaiety and sadness, almost in the vein of an Irish Wake, the entertaining anecdotes in celebration of Jeremy’s life interspersed with more solemn tributes turning laughter into tears in an instant.

Perversely, Jeremy’s untimely death has served as a memento mori for me, not in a pessimistic way you understand, but rather as a reminder that even the greatest among us have no control on when we leave this mortal coil. His passing somehow makes the thought of dying less daunting. If it is good enough for Beadlebum then its good enough for me!