Funeral Crew. Go on - ask away!

As a bit of an aside, can any of our pro crew comment on the use of Funeral Celebrants?

A friend of mine has had it suggested to him by an FD (he's not local to me though) that he should do some celebrant work (he's very used to public speaking) as they're struggling to find people.

Chatting over a glass or two, thought it could be something I'd like to do too. I'm comfortable public speaking and words are part of my other work so happy to speak to people and put together eulogy/bios.

But how do you get into it? I see lots of folk offering courses and whilst that may be useful in making sure etiquette is observed, I'm always a little sceptical about parting with several thousand hard earned...

Are the customers generally the families who come direct or the FDs who resell a Celebrant's services? Any pointers in general?

I wonder if it happens more than we'd think.

My mum had some fairly unusual requests for her funeral - all of which we got, and the funeral place already had links to local amateur dramatics etc. for those kind of things.

Which meant that some people attended in fancy dress, people taking photos, and applause several times - not least when the bloke dressed in suspenders and basque finished his rendition of Sweet Transvestite.

It wasn't dull.......... I do think ours was fairly unusual but I think a fair few probably stray from conventional

You should also expect the unexpected, at my Uncle's funeral everything was going fine with the service until he was sent on his final journey, the Minister pressed the button and nothing happened. You could see the 'oh carp' look on his face and several more panicked clicks of the button and still nothing.

Luckily he caught my eye and we managed to start everyone getting up and leaving but the poor Minister was not having a good day...

Bloomin' elf 'n' safety caused all that trouble as the system never got turned back on after being inspected, even when you've rolled over for the last time the buggers are still there causing trouble.

We were recommended a celebrant via the funeral directors and she was very good, the actual taking the service is probably about 20% of what is involved as you need to understand who the person who has died was and what they meant to the family so you can write the service. You will spend time guiding the family through all the details, what readings do they want, hyms, music, how it starts and finishes.

There is a lot more to it than a bit of public speaking, you are taking the service for up to an hour and are the centre of attention in an event people will remember for a very long time.

What does the funeral trade make of what went on in Hull?

I'll only be able to give general views from speaking with colleagues from other companies.

The industry is in desperate need of proper regulation. As it stands, anyone can set up as a funeral director with no experience or qualifications at all. This needs to change.

Anecdotally we have seen an increase in the number of relatives who want their relatives ashes returned to them. Most families want the cremains back soon after the funeral, but we have some in store for over a decade. This might be because there are no close relatives who want them - in these cases after a few letters to the relatives they are scattered in the garden of remembrance at the crematorium. Others are waiting for the spouse to die so that both ashes can be combined.

Now though we have seen a noticeable increase in the number of relatives claiming ashes "out of the blue".

I've got no salacious gossip regarding the goings on in Hull. My personal thoughts are that he has severe cash flow issues and has got in well over his head.

SD.