I’m pleased Liz Taylor died the way she did.  Not only was it a fairly quick exit, without too much pain and the indignity of her last days covered by the media, but she also had a great funeral.

Although she wasn’t a member of My Last Song, she may as well have been. And she would have appreciated the Lifebox facility.

She had planned her funeral to the last detail. She wanted to be late for it, so this was an instruction. She wanted it to be interdenominational, so this too was an instruction.

The service included a recital of the Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo and a trumpet solo of Amazing Grace, played by Taylor’s grandson Rhys.

She had the final performance she wanted, but only because she (and her family) had planned it beforehand.

Which is the reason she would have enjoyed visiting My Last Song, which helps and encourages people to plan their funerals as well as other end of life decisions.

Liz Taylor would also have taken advantage of the Lifebox and used it to store specially recorded videos – and one can imagine how good these would have been; readings – similarly dramatic; her life story; and even her secrets – and I bet there are still some she’s taken to the grave with her.

So if you know of anyone who would like to follow in her footsteps, go out in style and be remembered for years to come, you know where to point them.

And who knows, Liz Taylor might have visited My Last Song…we have been getting lots of traffic from California recently.

A few months ago, during a dreary long November evening, I turned to the solace of music, in particular the music of Neil Diamond.

After listening to some of my favourite numbers, I realised just how appropriate many of his songs were to mark the end of someone’s life. So I spent most of the night playing his songs, listing them, re-ordering them, adding to and amending my choices and when finalised, writing cameo descriptions of their unique appeal and qualities as farewell songs.

The next morning, hardly a word had to be changed when I added the article to My Last Song – called simply Farewell Songs From Neil Diamond.

Now, four months later, I have played every track in the list, and I want you to enjoy the beauty and power of some of these songs. Self indulgent, yes, but please share this indulgence with me by listening to the following by clicking the YouTube clips in the article.

Stones
A haunting, poetic song of recalled love and yearning made more beautiful by the sumptuous arrangement.  Stones marked Diamond’s arrival as a writer of original, complex and exceptionally moving songs, using metaphor and imagery with a confidence that would make him one of the outstanding artists of his generation.

If You Go Away
Originally by Jacques Brel, this is one of the most endearing love songs ever written. Diamond clearly recognised its emotional power and delivers an unforgettably touching, sensitive version.

Play Me
In the most lovely, sensitive couplets Diamond reveals to his lover the extent to which he depends on her for his very existence. ‘You are the sun, I am the moon, You are the words, I am the tune…Play me.’ And if ever a melody was written that matched a song’s sentiments, Diamond achieves it here.

Dear Father
Diamond wrote the score for the film Jonathan Livingstone Seagull including this heart rending tour de force. Symphonic in structure, much of it is instrumental and epic in its aural power and pastoral beauty. ‘Dear Father, we dream while we may,’ is the description of so many lives unfulfilled but no less special.

I’ve Been This Way Before
A particularly appropriate farewell song with Diamond extracting every last drop of emotion. In adding layer upon layer of sound, power and sentiment, Diamond proves he’s the master of poignant sadness. It articulates intense grief, yet also can be read as promising hope and release.

Dry Your Eyes
You get the feeling that Diamond is seeing the crowded church swaying to the swirling rhythms, tears swelling in every eye, the haunting French horns used to scintillating effect as the song comes to an end. ‘And if you can’t recall the reason, can you hear the people sing? Right through the lightening and the thunder to the dark side of the moon, To that distant falling angel that descended much too soon. And come dry your eyes.’ Dry Your Eyes is an almost shameless manipulation of our raw emotions.

Be
Poetry of the highest order, ‘Be as a page that aches for a word, Which speaks on a theme that is timeless, While the one God will make for your day. Sing as a song in search of a voice that is silent, And the one God will make for your way.’ The magnificent arrangement builds into an intense climax, before a gentle closing. The closest Diamond has come to writing a hymn.

Hello Again
Diamond here expresses the grief of parting from a loved one…it hurts so much nothing can disguise it. Unbearable sadness, perfectly expressed.

I Am I Said
Poetic, enigmatic, intense, and emotional with a brilliant arrangement and memorable melody. I Am I Said excites and disturbs in equal measure. His dramatic delivery ensures we share his vulnerability.
Well, if you have got this far, and if you have played some of these tracks I thank you and hope you share my enthusiasm for and love of Neil Diamond’s songs.

As you can gather, they mean a huge amount to me. And, in the right setting, they might mean a lot to others as well.

In an attempt to get publicity for its worthwhile Great Daffodil Appeal, Marie Curie Cancer Care published the findings of a survey of where people would like to die.

These findings were picked up by the Dying Matters Coalition which, knowing the interests of the tabloid news desks (and probably its members also), headlined the piece they wrote on their website: ‘Most men would like to die having sex’.

Why let the facts get in the way of a good story…only one in five men said they would like to spend their final moments engaging in a spot of hanky panky.

More important than the imprecise description of research statistics is the good work the Dying Matters Coalition is doing in getting death talked about.  In this case, the vital issue of where people want to die instead of hospitals which is where most people will experience a possibly lonely and frightening end.

Dying Matters put this item on their Facebook page which resulted in some interesting comments. One woman said she could understand why ‘some blokes would want to go while they’re coming’.

Another reminded us of Peter Sellers’ comment on having a heart attack while making love to Britt Ekland: ‘I didn’t know whether I was coming or going.’

So well done Marie Curie and Dying Matters. Your efforts have resulted in a witty discussion about sex and death…the final taboos are gradually being defeated, and that can only be a good thing.

One of the great things about My Last Song is the exposure I have to fine music.

I had the idea for the website because I knew that as music is so important in people’s lives they would want this reflected in their deaths. And so the musical choices for their last songs would have to be wider than the fairly limited and often inappropriate dozen or so funeral hymns.

Not that there’s anything wrong with hymns chosen for funerals. They can be perfect in the right context, as a contributor to the site has pointed out with great conviction.

I was, therefore, delighted to read a review in the Guardian by the excellent Tim Ashton of a CD of Liszt’s funeral music.

As he says in his review, the music results from the composer’s confrontations with mortality. The album includes Three Funeral Odes of 1866, ferocious laments for Liszt’s son Daniel who died in 1859 and his elder daughter Blandine who was taken from him in 1862.

I have also recently come across the ultimate compilation of classical funeral music, courtesy of Virgin Classics.

It’s called Funeral Music, a simple title which hardly describes the glorious pieces from composers including Samuel Barber, Mozart, Verdi, Beethoven, Faure, Bach and Mahler.

Love and death are two huge inspirations for the creative mind, and nothing better illustrates this that the wonderful music that has been written when ‘confronting mortality’.

So please consider this when choosing the music for the final farewell. Or when simply wanting to hear profound, glorious and memorable music.

I felt distinctly worried by David Cameron’s announcement that the UK and its allies (the US) are planning a no-flight zone in Libya to hasten the downfall of President Gaddafi.

To intervene in another country to affect regime change is against international law. Shooting down the aircraft of another country is an act of war. It will lead to more deaths, more funerals of loved ones here and in Libya.

Haven’t we learnt from our doomed intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan that we should not interfere in the affairs of other countries?

Because of the strategic importance of the middle east and the arab countries of North Africa, the world’s media are covering the story in droves. And as a consequence, western populations are seeing the brutal murders of peaceful protesters by tyrannical dictators such as Mubarak and Gaddafi. Understandably, the public’s sympathy are with these innocent people.

Playing to the public gallery, David Cameron thinks that his popularity will increase if he flexes some military muscle and imposes a no-flight zone.

Think again, please Mr Cameron. Explain what gives you the right to judge good and evil on the international stage.

The North Korean regime is starving its people to death. Mr Mugabe killed and tortured his opponents for over a decade, and people are still being beaten up by his thugs. The Burmese junta is a wicked and cruel dictatorship that has killed thousands of people who want democracy in their country.  These are just some of the countries in which rulers are cruel and despotic beyond imagination, and beyond the coverage of the world’s media.

I’m afraid to say that Mr Cameron’s desire for military intervention is to bolster his popularity, and it frightens me.  He must resist taking measures that are illegal to placate media pressure and uninformed public opinion.  It’s called leadership, Mr Cameron, just as much as is the image of a strong man ordering fighter aircraft to shoot down other aircraft.

Similarly it was media pressure that forced the British government to go to the huge cost and effort of rescuing and evacuating British workers in Libya. Surely this is the responsibility of their employers, the oil companies making huge profits by extracting this valuable commodity from the Libyan desert.

Surely they can afford to have planes on standby to evacuate their workers when, as their risk assessment experts will have recognised, the regimes in Tripoli, Cairo, Tunis and, dare one say it, Riyadh, begin to topple.  Or are they too busy looking at ways to avoid paying tax to the UK government?

I doubt very much they will be handed the bill for the military planes and vessels used to evacuate their staff, so they win both ways. Lots of profit, not much tax to pay and when things go wrong, the bill is paid for by the taxpayer.

Just because the Sun and the Daily Mail cry out for action is no reason to break international law, engage in deadly military activities and cost the country millions of pounds it can’t afford. We would do better for the government to take on tax avoiding corporates rather than dictatorships in foreign parts.

Saturday’s Radio Four Today programme included a piece about the shortage of burial land in our cities, citing the example of south east London where cemeteries, including the wonderful but scandalously neglected  Nunhead cemetery, have little or no space.

Today presenter Evan Davies suggested to Dr Julie Rugg who chairs the cemetery research group at the University of York that natural burial grounds offered the solution as they had enough capacity, were outside built up areas and were environmentally friendly.

Dr Rugg replied that natural burial grounds were difficult and expensive to reach particularly for older relatives.  She had come across people in London who needed to use five buses to visit the graves of their loved ones situated in these often remote locations.

She has a point, although such issues haven’t stopped the 30 per cent year on year rise in the number of people being buried in natural woodland sites.

Rosie Inman-Cook, who runs the Association of Natural Burial Grounds, believes the 240 natural burial grounds in the UK “should meet the demand for the foreseeable future.”

Even so, we should take seriously Dr Rugg’s opinion. While from the viewpoint of the reasonably fit and affluent, natural burial has many environmental advantages, to a less well off old person getting to a woodland burial to attend the interment and thereafter visiting the location, presents real disadvantages.

Dr Rugg’s suggested solution was the reuse of the space already taken by a body in our urban cemeteries after it had been there for about 100 years.

While I can see the sense of this, my main worry is the loss of the wonderful gravestones that are such a pleasure when walking in the impressive civic graveyards that our Victorian forebears situated in what was then the outer areas of our towns and cities.

I also think people will not want to bury their loved ones in a space that was previously occupied by an earlier grave.

It seems to me that our age will see its dead being put in fields and woods where they enhance the environment and where there is less pressure on space.

This will present problems, but these can be overcome if families and friends help those more disadvantaged to get to natural burial sites. Maybe that is something that the Big Society can address.

The Brighton Argus covered the story of a local church funeral at which a mobile phone went off…and the ringtone was ‘Staying Alive’, the Bee Gee’s hit.

The most interesting part of this rather amusing story is the comments on the paper’s website. Most contributors thought this was funny and many suggested suitable secular songs which they wanted for their funerals.

Earlier this month, on the west coast of the US rather than the south coast of the UK, a ‘pop culture’ journalist posted a blog on the songs he wanted played at his funeral.

At the time of writing, 105 comments had been posted with the most diverse, quirky, in some case shocking, selections of songs. And these have been ‘liked’ (and occasionally ‘disliked’) often by ten or more people.

And in my email inbox today somebody asked how they could contribute the five songs they wanted to be remembered by. When this selection comes through it will be the 74^th contribution.

Google ‘funeral songs’ and you’ll find pages of websites with lists of suggested tracks, though with the same ten or so tracks often appearing.

My Last Song appears on page 2, which we hope to improve on, but you get my drift…this interest in personal choices of music to mark your ending is growing in popularity.  I’m frequently interviewed on local radio stations to discuss ‘funeral music’ presumably because the editors and presenters know funeral songs interest their audiences.

What does this prove? I rather agree with Charles Cowling, author of the Good Funeral Guide, who believes that the baby boomer generation are now addressing their mortality and are redefining death culture as they redefined youth culture in the 1960s.

Not for them the dreary, dull and depressing traditional funerals with a couple of Victorian songs expressing religious sentiments when they have few if any religious beliefs.

No, increasingly this group want to be remembered by a positive, celebratory and personal ceremony. All Things Bright and Beautiful is out, What A Wonderful World is in.

So I think the future is looking bright for the increasing number of companies, some of them joined in a loose alliance known as the Farewell Innovators, positioned to give this market what it needs, not what rather traditional and inflexible funeral directors, think is right for it.

The death today of John Barry, the British filmscore composer, prompted me to select five Barry pieces suitable to be sent off to.

Just ten seconds of a John Barry score could tell you all you needed to know about the movie. The melodies and arrangements added excitement, atmosphere, mystery and interest to every film he wrote for.

Such was his ability to create aural moods and sound pictures that at times listening was more enjoyable than watching.

Commenting on his death, British film composer David Arnold said that James Bond wouldn’t have been half as cool without John Barry holding his hand, as good an epitaph as you can get.

I already had a couple of favourites, Goldfinger and Born Free. In 1964 I was a country boy visiting relatives in London when they took me to see Goldfinger in a huge and glamourous cinema. The introduction music and graphics made me tingle. It summoned up the swinging 60s and I still recall it vividly.

Born Free? Well, a lovely piece of music to go with a marvellous film. John Barry’s score suited the script so well.

But choosing the other three pieces was incredibily difficult because he had written so many wonderfully evocative, haunting, thrilling melodies, each with an emotional appeal that would be suitable for the farewell event.

You will have to go to the article to see which three selections made up the five, and I hope you think they are good choices. I’m tempted to reallocate my time this week to listen to more of his filmscores, certain that I’ll hear melodies and arrangements that will fill me with joy and pleasure.

Paradoxical then that John Barry’s death confirmed to me the wonderful variety of music from all genres from which farewell pieces can be selected.

So, don’t put up with the limited and clichéd choices put in front of you by funeral directors, funeral planners and well meaning relatives.

Let your soul and imagination soar…recall the music that changed your life…spend time going through the My Last Song music pages…and whatever you do, make sure you go out on the right note.

It may seem unlikely but the best two funeral websites in the world are run by UK companies.

A top ten list was compiled earlier this month by US funeral guru Brian Burkhardt. And heading the chart was London based My Last Song followed by The Good Funeral Guide, run out of Birmingham.

The other places were taken by US websites.

I was surprised that My Last Song had been awarded the number one slot.

In the past two years there’s been a big increase in the number of funeral websites. They are particularly popular in the US, so for My Last Song to be chosen as the best in the world by an American funeral expert is quite an honour.

Charles Cowling, who started his website in 2009 to promote his book The Good Funeral Guide, is equally pleased. “There’s a lot of global ideas-swapping around the topic of funeral customs and how they are evolving, especially in the English speaking world. This is a flattering accolade.”

What is it about funeral information that makes it so web-friendly?

First is that while people are reluctant to talk to their friends and family about their mortality and the funeral they want, a website is emotionally neutral and gives positive advice. It’s not going to cry or ask to be left money.

Second, the huge increase in ‘silver surfers’ means that more older people are accessing the internet to find relevant information.

Third is type of information being offered by websites that appeal to the ageing baby boomers.  Fifty years ago this group redefined youth culture. Now they are challenging funeral traditions. They want funerals that match their lifestyles, their beliefs, their achievements and their interests and websites like My Last Song give them the information, for instance music choices, they like.

As Charles Cowling emphasises, “This demographic is simply not going to accept a dreary traditional ‘cut and paste’ farewell event to mark their lives. They will want colourful, celebratory and upbeat funerals.” And funeral websites are meeting their needs.

Funeral planning and advice might be a niche market, but the demographics suggest it will be very big in a few years time.

I was convinced My Last Song would be a success when I analysed the population figures. “According to the Office of National Statistics, there will be almost 7 million people aged 70 and over in 2015 in England alone.  In 2020 this rises to 8 million.

The other interesting statistic is that there were less than half a million deaths registered in the UK in 2009 and that between 1999 and 2009, death rates fell by more than a quarter. So people are living longer which means they will be our customers for longer, visiting the websites more often, buying funeral plans, writing and editing their wills, wanting more information about age related illnesses, care options, and how to enjoy a longer and more active older age.

My Last Song has in-depth advice on all these issues, and expects to monetise the website within two or three years with affiliate agreements, sponsored pages and click throughs to companies wanting to reach this demographic.

I’m also planning to launch a US version of the site in 2012 and now looking for collaborators across the Atlantic.

There are more people in the US, they spend more per head on their funerals and they love music, which is an important driver for visitors to My Last Song.

Cowling’s business model is more simple. He uses his website as a first port of call for anyone needing to plan a funeral and find a good funeral director. It also carries updates to his book.

He has a listing of outstanding funeral directors UK-wide to which he is constantly adding.  “People increasingly want unique funerals for unique

The Good Funeral Guide website also carries a lively and provocative blog which enjoys a world-wide readership.

There are lots of jokes about the funeral business being a dying industry, but for these two UK companies, there’s a lot to look forward to.

Co-operative Funeralcare’s use of an industry trends survey to place the brand as ‘thought leader’ in their industry is a well worn marketing device.

But the survey doesn’t tell us anything we don’t know, and in reality highlights the Co-op’s attempt to catch up.  In short the survey of 2000 people and 850 of its funeral companies confirms that more people now want a celebration of their life, colourful events, secular songs, bespoke coffins, green funerals and personal input from mourners.

The Co-op have involved the country’s leading funeral historian, Dr Julian Litten, to opine that the funerals of Princess Diana and Jade Goody have changed the public’s view of how funerals can be delivered.

I think Dr Litten is wrong about this.  The British public can decide for themselves that a religious ritual isn’t appropriate for someone who had no religious beliefs and that as paying customers they will have the send off they want rather than a ‘choose one from three options’ offered by many funeral directors.

Similarly, there wasn’t much that was environmentally friendly about Princess Di’s and Jade Goody’s funerals, yet the demand for green funerals has risen hugely in the last 15 years as people become more concerned about the environmentally damaging aspects of traditional funerals.

No, organisations like the Co-operative Funeralcare have been slow to understand the change in demand whereas innovators such as My Last Song, One Life ceremonies, the green burial movement, suppliers of bespoke coffins and authors of guides such as The Good Funeral Guide have understood the requirements of the now ageing baby boomers and are meeting their needs.

The number of humanist officiants is increasing to meet the demands of atheists for humanist funerals, and I would like to commend the effort put in by one in particular, Simon Allen, who’s contribution to My Last Song has been invaluable.

The funeral industry is on the verge of a big change in how it operates, and this change is driven by consumer demand. Funeral directors are, inevitably, traditional and slow to change although there are notable exceptions.

But they must recognise that many new customers will be from the generation who, when in their teens redefined youth culture. During the next years of their lives they expected to get what they wanted and that’s going to be true for how their end of life (or their older relatives)  is treated.

The one statistic that is still disappointing if not surprising is that 55 per cent of respondents hadn’t discussed their funerals with family and friends.  Death and funerals are still taboo subjects, but the trend I suspect is for this to be reducing, helped by the growing number of online sources of support and information.

I will again plug the Lifebox facility of My Last Song which encourages and enables people to plan their own bespoke funeral event and store those plans and wishes safely for their loved ones to access.  In practice filling in the funeral wishes checklist and the individual death plan will mean discussing the options with close family members.

When death and funerals are more commonly discussed, the numbers of celebratory, colourful and individual ceremonies requested will increase…whether the larger traditional funeral companies are well placed to deliver them efficiently is questionable.