The dying art.

The trick to dying is making a good job of your timing. James Dean timed his death very poorly – firmly on the way up and at that time in his life easily one of the coolest human beings in existence; he must have been kicking himself. Vincent Van Gogh was the same, dust to dusting before his bank balance could take a turn for the better, his work only becoming massively overrated years after he’d been cack-handed with that pistol, in that field. In an ideal world Van Gogh would have been immortal, if only so that Don McLean would never have written ‘Vincent’, a song so bad it achieves the rare accolade of being even worse than the opposite of good. On the other hand, David Bowie died with impeccable timing – a new album and a new year, the very moment that the world needed something to talk about; but poor old Lemmy died a few days later and barely got a mention, his highly eventful career scattered as if into nothing. Brian Jones cleverly died before he could be remembered as a fat recluse and Whitney Houston was probably just happy not to be living in misery anymore. Jimmy Saville was perhaps the canniest of the lot, slipping away before the shit hit the fan and then hit him in the face in turn; he even managed to get a proper send-off first, which is more than could be said for Hitler.

I say all this because Martin Amis died a few days ago and I can’t but feel that he didn’t do himself any favours with his timing. Amis was quite something of a man. He was a giant amongst words and, as many of his obituaries pointed out, pretty much unrivalled in his ability to construct a sentence. I mean, anyone can write a sentence (well, most people can), even I can write a sentence, but Amis could weave words together (the right words, I should add) to create something that was a genuine pleasure to read, sometimes even more pleasure to read out loud. Not that I am an expert on him, but I do know I have read quite a lot of his non-fiction work, his memoirs and a couple of his novels, and that modest haul is at least enough to remind me just why he was so famed and admired as a writer. Of those novels ‘Money’ is easily one of the best books I have ever read (though in fairness if I have read more than 50 novels – like proper grown-up ones – in my life then I’d be quite surprised), crammed as it is with all the sex and drugs and booze and sleaze and filthy lucre and crow-black humour that make human existence just about bearable. I read ‘Money’ on holiday in Cyprus many years ago and if it isn’t ripe to be re-read now I don’t know what is. And perhaps if every novel was as good as that I would have read a lot more by now. For that alone I owe Martin Amis a great debt.

Alas, famous people are not quite what they used to be, and reaction to Amis’ passing felt slightly muted, almost as if his enormous talent and unquestionable charisma was some sort of handicap in this age of celebrity emptiness. Being gifted and intelligent and articulate and one of the most exciting writers of a generation just isn’t fair on everyone else and so, at least in the broader public eye there were far more important things to consider last weekend when the news of Amis’ death broke, along with his oesophagus, from cancer, after decades of being a heroic smoker and general bon viveur. What, for instance, matters this Amis man when we have Philip Schofield’s career to chew over all weekend? Amis, who always came across as very amiable and sharp and rational in interview (albeit also really quite up himself, to some extent with very good reason) would also probably have been polite enough to simply roll his eyes at the mention of slippery Pip and get on with his next job. But, on reflection, why should his demise be apparently so less significant than the ongoing drama around Schofield, with his barely discernible ability in pretty much any field of achievement, other than to giggle at every unintentional double entendre, get certain proportions of the mid-morning/unemployed/mental health issues demographic in a lather and generally make a big fuss about nothing because, well, if he didn’t then everyone would suddenly stop and recognise him for what he is: a conceited nincompoop with all the real impact on worthwhile culture of a distant passing cloud or a fart in the breeze. Like I said, dying is all about timing, but I shall remember Martin Amis long after Schofield is found on a hospital trolley with an apple in his mouth and his trousers round his ankles.

Death is such a funny thing. Sometimes even funny ha-ha. And celebrity deaths almost never happen in isolation. This week we have had news of Rolf Harris, already dead a fortnight but only announced now so that his family could give him a decent, respectful burial; which is precisely the last thing he deserved. In any decent, respectful society the most decent and respectful ending he should have expected would be to have his corpse glued to a wall and used as target practice for gangs of travelling crossbow merchants and then coloured in with thick felt-tips. Still, at least he’s dead now, and the residents of Bray can go back to eating dinner at the Fat Duck instead of posting dog shit through his letter box at night. And then came the much sadder news of the death of Anna May Bullock, aka, Tina Turner, a more appropriate bookend to the famous terminal stations of the last seven days. She had presence and stamina and grit and a gift of a voice. I will always think most fondly of her in her sumptuous youth, standing up to her coke-addled, platinum standard arsehole husband/manager/tormentor, Ike, and channelling all the misery he laid on her into some of the sweatiest, funkiest most soulful singing imaginable. She may have sold more records later on but the look and style was all too overwrought, overthought, over-eighties and oh, that hair was dreadful; though none of that matters because at least she was free and happy and alive. And now she’s free and happy and dead.

So that’s your three-in-a-row celebrity cull. Tina is dead. And Martin. And Rolf. And all we can do is wait to see who comes next, perhaps speculate and cast rumour. Maybe even make a small wager with a friend. There are certainly worse things to gamble on. I think about death every day. Sometimes only for a fleeting moment and sometimes for a bit longer. It intrigues me and terrifies me and comforts me, all at once. These thoughts are often at their darkest in the middle of the night, the hour that I wake when even the birds are still asleep but I can’t switch back off again. It’s where I balance my sins and my blessings, my failures and, should any come to mind, my successes. It’s the time I’m most likely to wonder where, when and how I might go out for the last time. It seems on occasion somewhat perverse that our minds become so preoccupied by death, knowing that when it finally comes we won’t give it a second more thought. Obviously life would be far happier if all we thought about was the sky and the trees, but then we’d be living in denial and the inevitability of death would seem like a very rude intrusion. Better to know it’s coming, so we’re some sort of ready. I like that we get to hear about famous people when they die; that way we can hold them up and decide for ourselves if it was a life well lived, or indeed a life worth living at all. I note that Amis was 73, Turner 83 and Harris 93 when they died. There’s something quite unfair about that, but then we must comfort ourselves with the knowledge that there’s always something unfair about everything. That, after all, is life. And that’s also why we have a Philip Schofield.

G B Burton. 27.05.2023