Gross
11-Nov-07, 23:31
You will already know that Alan Coren, from The News Quiz, died recently.
He was very funny. His daughter writes for The Observer, and her piece last week was lovely, very touching. It brought a tear to my eye.
LONG LIVE LAUGHTER
When my brother and I were small, the sort of age when our homework was to write a story with a title like 'The Black Cat' or 'The Magical Tree', my father gave us some advice.
'Don't write the first thought that comes into your head,' he said, 'because that is what everyone will write. And don't write the second thought that comes into your head, because that is what the clever people will write. When you hit on a third thought, pick up the pen. That one is just yours.'
I have been trying to follow his advice ever since. Let's say I was going to write, this week, about the royal sex scandal. I would think about the difficulty of maintaining traditions of regal decadence in a world of mobile phone recorders, and reject that idea. Then I would think about the general world of ex-partners, revenge and blackmail, with a few anecdotes from my own insufficiently juicy life, and reject that too.
And then I would start thinking about how this is the second recent story involving a gay sex incident between royals and staff, and I would wonder what on earth goes on in the job interviews for those palaces; and I would remember how many curious historical posts there are to be filled in the royal household, and I would start to sense that a comical 900 words must lie there... including, along the way, a few questions about the precise duties of the 'Silver Stick-in-Waiting'.
Writing about my father's death, which happened two weeks ago, the novelist Howard Jacobson said: 'The world is not, after all, a funny place. The greater our debt, then, to [Alan Coren], who seduced us briefly into believing it was.'
Howard Jacobson said other lovely things, and my dad would have been so proud because he was a big fan of Howard Jacobson, but I don't agree with this sentiment and I don't think he would have either. Through my father's crinkly blue eyes, the world was the funniest place imaginable.
There are, admittedly, a few wars and crimes around the place. But there are also herons, hearing aids, hosepipe bans and Heather McCartney. There are priests, fire drills, cheese counters and David Dickinson. There are wrong numbers, talking parrots, clumsy tango dancers and a class system. There is the quality of sheepishness.
There are foreign cultures (the first word I ever learned in a new language, for practical reasons on holiday, was 'piscine'; soberly, my father explained to this credulous six-year-old that a swimming pool was given this name because all the little French children piscine it), and there are local disputes about hedges.
You can believe that the world is a terrible place and humorists like my father help distract from that horror. Or you can believe that terrible things should not distract us from the ultimate truth of the world: a wondrous circus of good intentions, shambolic results and peculiar side effects.
My father would have laughed at his funeral. We held it in a churchyard that he chose because a ventriloquist is buried there with his puppet. But, out of respect to ancient Coren family traditions, we had to find a rabbi who didn't mind going to a churchyard. It was like a spiritual Challenge Anneka
The service was rather beautiful, reflecting my father's sentimental attachment to both a lost Jewish heritage (with its gefilte fish balls and anxious tailors) and a Keats-and-churches England (with its net curtains, pet passports and fears of upsetting the bank manager).
My father would have laughed when the wonderful rabbi told my brother and me: 'I usually drop this prayer - it's a bit God-heavy.' He would have laughed when my uncle misread the map, looked in the wrong part of the cemetery and said, 'We've got a disaster on our hands - they've forgotten to dig a hole.'
He would have laughed at an obituary that claimed he was a lifelong card-carrying member of CND. He would have laughed when a second rabbi, who sang beautiful Hebrew prayers at the graveside, came out to Sandi Toksvig, and Jeremy Hardy said: 'I could tell; he imbued those prayers with a light touch of musical theatre.' And he would have laughed when the main rabbi talked about how sad we would find our first Christmas without him. Nothing like wearing one's Judaism lightly; how on earth will we stumble through our first Holy Communion without him?
He would have been laughing with delight, as all of this reflected back his faith in the warmth, humanity and comedy of a well-meaning world. It is a funny place. And I won't say it has gone dark without him, because it can't have done. He did not trick us into believing in a benevolent universe, he showed us that it was there.
Fate is trying to trick my family, right now, into seeing nothing but sadness and emptiness in the world; it's important not to be fooled for too long. I want to carry on trying to write columns, just as my father did. But he was the greatest man I ever knew; the most loving, and the easiest to love; and just at the moment, the first and second and third thoughts in my head are all exactly the same.
He was very funny. His daughter writes for The Observer, and her piece last week was lovely, very touching. It brought a tear to my eye.
LONG LIVE LAUGHTER
When my brother and I were small, the sort of age when our homework was to write a story with a title like 'The Black Cat' or 'The Magical Tree', my father gave us some advice.
'Don't write the first thought that comes into your head,' he said, 'because that is what everyone will write. And don't write the second thought that comes into your head, because that is what the clever people will write. When you hit on a third thought, pick up the pen. That one is just yours.'
I have been trying to follow his advice ever since. Let's say I was going to write, this week, about the royal sex scandal. I would think about the difficulty of maintaining traditions of regal decadence in a world of mobile phone recorders, and reject that idea. Then I would think about the general world of ex-partners, revenge and blackmail, with a few anecdotes from my own insufficiently juicy life, and reject that too.
And then I would start thinking about how this is the second recent story involving a gay sex incident between royals and staff, and I would wonder what on earth goes on in the job interviews for those palaces; and I would remember how many curious historical posts there are to be filled in the royal household, and I would start to sense that a comical 900 words must lie there... including, along the way, a few questions about the precise duties of the 'Silver Stick-in-Waiting'.
Writing about my father's death, which happened two weeks ago, the novelist Howard Jacobson said: 'The world is not, after all, a funny place. The greater our debt, then, to [Alan Coren], who seduced us briefly into believing it was.'
Howard Jacobson said other lovely things, and my dad would have been so proud because he was a big fan of Howard Jacobson, but I don't agree with this sentiment and I don't think he would have either. Through my father's crinkly blue eyes, the world was the funniest place imaginable.
There are, admittedly, a few wars and crimes around the place. But there are also herons, hearing aids, hosepipe bans and Heather McCartney. There are priests, fire drills, cheese counters and David Dickinson. There are wrong numbers, talking parrots, clumsy tango dancers and a class system. There is the quality of sheepishness.
There are foreign cultures (the first word I ever learned in a new language, for practical reasons on holiday, was 'piscine'; soberly, my father explained to this credulous six-year-old that a swimming pool was given this name because all the little French children piscine it), and there are local disputes about hedges.
You can believe that the world is a terrible place and humorists like my father help distract from that horror. Or you can believe that terrible things should not distract us from the ultimate truth of the world: a wondrous circus of good intentions, shambolic results and peculiar side effects.
My father would have laughed at his funeral. We held it in a churchyard that he chose because a ventriloquist is buried there with his puppet. But, out of respect to ancient Coren family traditions, we had to find a rabbi who didn't mind going to a churchyard. It was like a spiritual Challenge Anneka
The service was rather beautiful, reflecting my father's sentimental attachment to both a lost Jewish heritage (with its gefilte fish balls and anxious tailors) and a Keats-and-churches England (with its net curtains, pet passports and fears of upsetting the bank manager).
My father would have laughed when the wonderful rabbi told my brother and me: 'I usually drop this prayer - it's a bit God-heavy.' He would have laughed when my uncle misread the map, looked in the wrong part of the cemetery and said, 'We've got a disaster on our hands - they've forgotten to dig a hole.'
He would have laughed at an obituary that claimed he was a lifelong card-carrying member of CND. He would have laughed when a second rabbi, who sang beautiful Hebrew prayers at the graveside, came out to Sandi Toksvig, and Jeremy Hardy said: 'I could tell; he imbued those prayers with a light touch of musical theatre.' And he would have laughed when the main rabbi talked about how sad we would find our first Christmas without him. Nothing like wearing one's Judaism lightly; how on earth will we stumble through our first Holy Communion without him?
He would have been laughing with delight, as all of this reflected back his faith in the warmth, humanity and comedy of a well-meaning world. It is a funny place. And I won't say it has gone dark without him, because it can't have done. He did not trick us into believing in a benevolent universe, he showed us that it was there.
Fate is trying to trick my family, right now, into seeing nothing but sadness and emptiness in the world; it's important not to be fooled for too long. I want to carry on trying to write columns, just as my father did. But he was the greatest man I ever knew; the most loving, and the easiest to love; and just at the moment, the first and second and third thoughts in my head are all exactly the same.