This is nothing to do with the John Peel related tweet (above), a person I always liked but have kind of forgotten in recent years as my radio listening and sense of music appreciation dwindled. I just liked the "broadsheet obituary" phrase. Ahem.
When you're gone, the only way you'll know (ignoring the fact that you're gone) you made it in life is by somehow earning that accolade of champions, politicians, clergymen, medal winners and celebs that is the "broadsheet obituary". Maybe including a photograph. They tend to be personality and family light, these aspects of the life celebrated being more of a footnote. The author (it is a piece of fiction) lends weight to colourful rumour, associations, embellishes the facts, rattles skeletons lurking in closets and depending on the political persuasions of the paper's owners lines up a few bits of tittle-tattle in his firing line and polishes them off.
So though I quite like the thought of earning a broadsheet obituary I do think that me receiving one is highly unlikely and the very fact that I'll be gone by the time (often a few weeks after the main event) it's published means I don't really need to care. It remains however some kind of a measure of a life but often an untrue representation, if measuring lives and being a fictional character is your sort of thing. Until you get there ... you never really know.
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