In the show Celebrity Send-Off famous people ask a loved one to arrange a funeral for them. It might seem like an odd premise for a show but this three-part mini-series produced by Channel 4 but it wants to inspire some important conversations.
In the first episode, Bez, from the 1990s band Happy Mondays, asks us: “Have you ever thought about planning your own funeral?” As an expert in the social aspects of dying, death and bereavement, I can tell you that the answer for many of us is “no”. This lack of thought about our last moments is a huge problem, one which this series is trying to address.
The show, produced in conjunction with Co-op Funeralcare, taps into our fascination with celebrity and death. It’s easy to understand why people like celebrity, providing us with a sense of intimacy with distant others. However, our fascination with death is a bit more complicated. There is a seemingly endless appetite for stories about dying and death. This is accompanied by a profound reticence to engage with our deaths and the deaths of people closest to us.
Data from research commissioned by the charity Marie Curie indicates that, as a society, people still think we don’t talk about death enough. This extends to funeral planning and end-of-life preferences, where only 40% of people surveyed had said they had spoken to someone about whether they wanted their body to be cremated, buried or donated.
This reveals a wider lack of preparedness in the UK for facing the future. Even before the current cost-of-living crisis, very few people in the UK had money set aside for their own funeral and fewer still were making plans for their care – through advance directives – should they become incapacitated and unable to make informed decisions.
As public service broadcasting, intended to both educate and entertain, programmes such as Celebrity Send-Off can help prompt important discussions about funeral planning and end-of-life wishes, contributing to a change in attitudes around death and dying. Such change can have practical outcomes, leading to greater involvement in funeral planning, increased financial planning for your funeral, and better take-up and engagement with advance care planning.
Channel 4’s intention in Celebrity Send-Off is to help normalise conversations around death. This is very much in line with death education and the UK government’s end-of-life strategy since 2008, both of which are committed to raising public awareness of issues surrounding dying, death and bereavement.
In the mini-series, we see one-half of the celebrity duo try to anticipate what the other would like at their funeral, from the type of music or flowers they want, to whether they want to be buried or cremated. The final result is revealed in a short video montage in which the “dead” celebrity gets to watch their funeral.
The outcome, however, is not always to the “dead” celebrity’s liking. This illustrates the difficulty in trying to guess what another person wants, without first discussing it with them. In one episode, Gogglebox’s Marcus Luther plans a sofa-shaped flower arrangement for his wife, Mica Ven, to reflect her connection with the popular Channel 4 show, only to discover that she does not want to be defined by it. In another, former Team GB gold medallist, Kris Akabussi, is keen to know if his daughter Shakira has correctly anticipated his desire to be buried in Nigeria, while also acknowledging his Britishness by having a union flag on his coffin.
All of this illustrates the importance of getting the details of what matters most to the deceased right. Identity and how a person is represented – in terms of a person’s faith (or none), ethnicity or nationality, interests, passions and so forth – is at the core of these decisions. This again illustrates the need to talk to one another about a person’s actual wishes rather than simply relying on what we think they may want. However well-intentioned, without knowing in advance what a person wants, we may well get it wrong.
When celebrities in the series are shown options around the choices involved in funeral planning – burial or cremation; wood, wicker or cardboard coffin; hearse or horse-drawn carriage – a key opportunity for conversation is missed. These choices can have significant financial and environmental implications which should be part of conversations around funeral planning. Discussion of a person’s digital legacy (what remains online about them), will writing, estate planning and even a person’s preferences for the type of care they would like to receive at the end of life should also have been raised.
The implications of not talking about and planning our end-of-life wishes are grave. A failure to share our preferences with close family and friends – about whether we want our body to be buried, cremated or donated – may leave those left behind uncertain as to what to do.
A lack of financial planning may also leave those left behind with difficult decisions at a time when they are feeling most vulnerable. Prior discussion and planning may instead allow for more informed decision-making that allows people to create a lasting legacy that honours the memory and wishes of the deceased while avoiding the financial pitfalls that often accompany loss.
The average cost of a funeral in the UK is £4,800. So planning and making sure there is money put away for this and for care is important because not preparing can leave living loved ones to experience funeral poverty.
Help is available for people wanting to start conversations about funeral planning from a range of resources. The SunLife insurance company provides some useful tips on starting such conversations, while the charity Marie Curie offers useful advice on how to save and pay for a funeral. Many of these resources, including Hospice UK, advise us to share our wishes by writing them down and letting others closest to us know where to find them.
Celebrity Send-Off will not solve our problems around the lack of funeral planning (including the heartache and legal wrangling that often ensues when we fail to communicate our wishes). Still, it might just provide a starting point by prompting conversations about a topic many people had never before considered.
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Michael Brennan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
