Now that she is dead - bludgeoned to death by an unknown assailant, if you believe the news - I can tell you my Ann Widdecombe story.

It was May 2019 and I was in Dorset to cover a meet-the-candidates event staged by Nigel Farage’s recently-launched Brexit Party. Widdecombe was the star attraction. Because she was more or less a household name, having been both a Conservative Cabinet Minister and, more pertinently, a contestant on the popular TV shows Strictly Come Dancing and Celebrity Big Brother, Widdecombe was considered quite a catch for Farage’s new outfit.

When I met Widdecombe she was just like I expected physically: a bit overweight, frumpily dressed, with a lolling, oversized mouth and small, jagged teeth somewhat redolent of a sand tiger shark’s, a helmet of white hair, pallid skin, wild eyes which seemed to look almost everywhere except at the person talking to her, and with that very distinctive voice whose reassuring, upper middle class contralto kept sabotaging itself with wheezing squeaks like a damaged organ pipe’s. I’m not trying to be cruel, just honest: Widdecombe would have been the first to admit, indeed almost took pride in the fact, that she was no looker. What was probably at least in part responsible for her lifelong celibacy was also a major part of her public image. “I’m toothy, dumpy, ugly, overweight, a spinster - what the hell”, she once said.

She was also just like I expected in terms of character: bossy; breathless; generous; opinionated; forthright; old fashioned; decent; game; considerate; provocative; loquacious; overstated; and obviously quite kind and lovable underneath - the sort of person who, if, say, she lived in your remote Devon village, you’d initially find quite irritating but would come to respect as a likeable, decent sort whom you were glad to have as a neighbour.

And that’s it. That’s my Ann Widdecombe story. I mention my brief encounter with her not because it’s exceptional or even that interesting, but rather because I suspect that it’s entirely representative of the Ann Widdecombe experience that everyone else who ever met her had too.

I’m not saying there was anything insincere about Ann Widdecombe’s Ann Widdecombe act. I’m sure she meant every word of it, every moment of it, at the time. But it was still an act, as the lives of public figures with that level of media prominence always are. Ann Widdecombe may have started out life as a human being, but by the end of it she had definitely worked herself into becoming a brand. In the same way that Snoopy is a brand, or Pitbull is a brand or Snoop Dogg is a brand.

This is why I’m a bit sceptical of all those voices now speculating on how or why Ann Widdecombe died - if she did die - based on their understanding of who they think she was.

For example, some people are speculating that she was bumped off because she knew too much and was about to spill the beans on paedophilia in the Establishment. [Paedophilia which, for some bizarre reason, she’d only just very recently heard about, having hitherto been blithely oblivious to it, despite all those years at Cabinet level in Houses of Parliament positively pullulating with child sex abusers, SRA practitioners and other bottom feeding hypocrites].

Others are stating confidently that there is just no way Ann Widdecombe would have agreed to have her death staged, in the manner of Charlie Kirk’s. How do they know this? Well apparently, it was because she was too high-minded. As well as being an ardent and sincere Christian - she converted to Catholicism in protest at the Church of England’s decision to ordain women as priests - she was also famously principled, one of those awkward squad mavericks who refused to toe the party line if it went against her most cherished values, even to the point of jeopardising her career.

But how would any of us know what Ann Widdecombe would or wouldn’t do? All we have to go on is newspaper reports (ie lies, spin, propaganda), political speeches (ie performances) and the exaggerated version of herself she got so very good at playing in public, especially on shows like Celebrity Big Brother where she souped up her eccentricities even more because she understood that’s what you have to do when you’re a brand: engage in relentlessly on-brand behaviour so as to keep your public happy and unconfused.

Nigel Farage knows this: must appear at every possible opportunity clutching a pint and fag. Pitbull knows this: remember not to fly to Turkey for one of those hair transplants or be seen without trademark white shirt and tie. Snoopy knows this: lie on top of kennel and dream about dog fights with the Red Baron. Snoop Dogg knows this: smoke weed; act stoned even if you’re not. Ann Widdecombe knew it. Or, according to preference, Ann Widdecombe still knows it because she’s not dead yet, just in one of those safe houses where they hide all the other not-dead celebrities - Charlie Kirk; Jo Cox; David Bowie; etc - before they’re assigned to their new location at an underground base in Antarctica or an island in Australia or ‘Valhalla’ or wherever.

When I met Ann Widdecombe in 2019 I was still, relatively speaking, a Normie. If Widdecombe had died in mysterious circumstances at that time I would probably have been gripped - as Normies currently are - by the ongoing search for her as-yet-unidentified killer. Having once met her I might even have felt an extra twinge of sympathy that this lovable battle-axe had come to such an undeservedly sticky end.

Once you’re awake, though, it becomes impossible to view these incidents in the same way because you know that they’re most likely staged. I’m not saying that Ann Widdecombe is or isn’t dead because having not seen the body I couldn’t tell you either way. What I do know is that this is showing all the signs of being another of their psyops and as a consequence I find it hard to get emotionally involved in any of the published details, most of which will be a total fabrication.

The Normie reaction to this would be: “How dare you? An elderly woman was brutally murdered and all you can do is sneer that it’s fake.”

You get this reaction from some purportedly Awake people too. Just recently I was berated and insulted - called ‘puerile and heartless’, told I wasn’t a real Christian - by a podcast listener on my Telegram channel for not believing that a deranged immigrant killer called Axel Rudakubana killed three little girls at a Taylor-Swift-themed dance workshop in Southport, Merseyside.

I’ve written about this ‘Shoot the Messenger’ behaviour before. Whenever you question an official narrative where deaths are involved - October 7, the Trump ‘assassination’, Charlie Kirk, the Manchester Arena ‘bombing’, etc - you get jumped on by shroud-wavers shrieking ‘But muh dead firefighter hero Corey Comperatore!’ or ‘But muh 40 beheaded babies!’

And while I can understand this response from Normies, who dutifully believe whatever the media tells them to believe, I find it less excusable when it comes from people who purport to be awake.

My two competing theories on this, explored in essays well worth your attention if you can be bothered, are as follows.

One - see Discrediting Our Cause - they’re not quite as Awake as they think. They’ve grasped all the basic stuff, all the low-hanging fruit - vaccines are bad; CBDCs and digital passports are a control mechanism; ‘climate change’ is a lie; etc - but they can’t quite let go of the overarching, Normie paradigm. They’re what I call ‘purple-pilled’, red-pilled on some issues, blue-pilled on others. They can’t quite accept that not just a few things they’ve been told but that everything they’ve been told is a lie.

Two - see Everyone Is a Baddie - they are agents of disruption. It’s an established intelligence services tactic to discredit Awake influencers - which is what, presumably, I am - through a process known as ‘manufactured doubt.’ So what these characters will do is lurk in the comments sections, pretending to be broadly sympathetic but then dropping in apparently good-faith criticisms. “Big fan of your stuff generally,” they might say. “But you’ve pushed it too far this time by denying the reality of cruelly beheaded babies/martyred Charlie Kirk/heroic murdered firefighter. Not everything is a conspiracy!”

What makes me suspicious of these responses is the intensity of the vitriol. They take it really personally, or at least pretend to, these people. They want you to know both how very much they care and how repellant and loathsome and stupid and morally inferior (and whatever other insults they can come up with: eg “oh and by the way, I only listen to your podcasts because you have some good guests not because of you, so there”) you are. Which you could understand if it were their late mother you’d just insulted. But it seems a bit of an overreaction to a story about someone they probably never even met.

According to the person who called me ‘puerile and heartless’, for example, ‘children died in a very bloody fashion’ in Southport. He knows this, he says, because “I live locally and attend one of the churches where a bereaved family is part of the congregation.”

This sounds quite persuasive until you ask the question: “But how can he be sure it’s not all part of the act?”

Ole Dammegard, the pre-eminent researcher of staged events, tells us that an awful lot of money and expertise and attention to detail goes into faking such operations. The expense is borne by the lucrative GoFundMes which spring up in the aftermath of the tragedy. Usually, these fundraisers provide more than enough money for the fake victims to be given a new identity and a new life elsewhere free from financial constraint.

I’m not saying that this is definitely what happened in the deprived Merseyside town of Southport. But it’s surely not beyond the realms of possibility - nor is it inhumane or immoral to suspect it. And if it did happen that way, there’s no reason to imagine that there wouldn’t still be ‘bereaved’ members of the family around in church and elsewhere mourning their lost loved ones. Which of us, honestly, could tell whether they were faking it or if they were for real, unless perhaps we knew them really really well?

But even knowing someone ‘really, really well’, I would suggest, rarely gives you the whole picture.

There’s strong anecdotal evidence that quite a few people in high places - leading politicians, world famous actors, senior clergy and judiciary, newspaper editors, generals, etc etc - indulge in horrendous practices up to and including child sacrifice. The fact that so many of our elites do this - frequently and on a large scale, if we are to believe the whistleblowers - and get away with it means that there must be an awful lot of people out there in public life (and elsewhere) who are exceptionally good at deception.

Which brings me back to Ann Widdecombe. How would any of us have any idea that she was who she told us she was? Like all politicians who rise beyond a certain level, she got where she did by becoming a caricature of whatever genuine characteristics she may once have possessed. She was an actor not a real person.

On this basis, I can perfectly well imagine a scenario in which doughty, upstanding, honest Ann Widdecombe was made an offer she couldn’t refuse - and yet refused it. “You’d rather die than agree to let us fake your death and whizz you off to a new location, there to spend the rest of your days watching old Miss Marple episodes, cross-stitching cat pictures and writing letters under a pseudonym to the Catholic Herald? Very well Ms Widdecombe.”

But I can just as easily imagine one in which she realised that at 78 she was getting a bit too old for all this political chicanery, couldn’t bear the idea of having to form part of a government with a shower of individuals as spivvy as Farage & co, and took the money and ran.

What I definitely can’t believe, even for one fraction of a second, is the story assiduously being promoted by the police and the media: that a hard-left activist from Rotherham in the north of England got into his car and drove 300 miles to a remote Devon village just so he could kill an elderly has-been politician with a stick he’d supposedly brought with him for the purpose.

Lone wolf killers: they only exist in the fiction. Same goes for ‘principled politicians.’

I’ve just been reading up on folic acid at UK Flour Millers, the trade body that represents the UK flour industry. You’ll never guess what. It turns out that folic acid is ‘safe and effective.’

Here’s the full paragraph, in case you don’t believe me:

Following consultation with public health experts and medical professionals, the UK government has implemented regulation to fortify non-wholemeal, wheat flour with folic acid. This is a common fortification policy and has been in place for years in many countries, such as Australia and Canada. It has been shown to be safe and effective in reducing the incidence of severe birth defects in babies.

Safe and effective. If that isn’t a phrase to inspire confidence then I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You’re probably one of those idiots with a death wish who endangered your own health - not to mention granny’s life - by refusing to take those Covid vaccines recommended a few years back by top medical experts such as the UK’s Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty.

Whitty (who was in the same year as me at school, though I don’t recall exchanging a single word with him, which I think speaks volumes for what a mark he must have made) is also the man responsible for pushing through the UK government’s legislation on folic acid. From December 2026, with only a few exceptions, flour sold in the UK must now be adulterated with this ‘safe and effective’ substance.

Except folic acid is not safe or effective. As pathologist and campaigner Dr Claire Craig explains to me on my latest podcast, folic acid is just about survivable if you are a lab rat but it is really not good for humans. It’s dangerous for cancer sufferers; it causes autism in children; it’s disastrous if you have pernicious anaemia; it can cause anaphylactic shock; and you definitely don’t want to take it if you’ve had a coronary stent fitted. Even the National Health Service (NHS) admits most of this on its website. It tried to take the information down - presumably under orders - but someone complained and, remarkably, the information was reinstated.

You also need to avoid the stuff if you carry the variant in the MTHFR gene which impairs the conversion of synthetic folic acid into the active form your cells can actually use. You really don’t want unmetabolised folic acid accumulating in your bloodstream. A randomised trial found men taking 1mg/day of synthetic folic acid had nearly doubled prostate cancer incidence of the placebo group over ten years. Other studies have suggested that folic acid in fact trebles the prostate cancer risk.

Oh, and it doesn’t even do the thing it’s supposed to do, which is save more babies than it kills. On the contrary, according to the only large randomised trial for pregnant women, for every neural-tube defect it prevented there were nine foetal deaths.

Read up on all the evidence for yourself at www.fauxlate.org. It’s mind boggling. You might think, “Oh come on! No way would they get away with contaminating the food supply with something this toxic if there weren’t at least one measurable benefit!” Nope. So comprehensive is the case against folic acid, it feels - not for the first time, it must be said - as if the people pushing it are taking the mickey.

“Well we successfully conned them into taking an experimental vaccine that made loads of them drop dead from blood clots, heart attacks and turbo cancer. How do we beat that?”

“How about poisoning their bread? That might be fun. And their cake, even better. The Great British Kill Off!”

“But what about all those carnivore and keto types who won’t eat bread or cake? Can we not find a way to kill them too, pretty please?”

“No. Those people are much more use to us alive. Every time someone tries to raise the folic acid issue on Twitter, up they’ll pop to boast about their own superior lifestyle choices.”

“Well they’re right, aren’t they?”

“Yes but incredibly smug and fantastically divisive. And a useful distraction from an argument that is supposed to be about grotesque state overreach not about how incredibly empowering it is when you’ve got half a dead cow stacked in your deep freeze.”

Folic acid is, to all intents and purposes, poison. So why are they forcing us to eat it?

Now there’s a question. But before I address it, I’d like briefly to dismiss the arguments raised by what Clare Craig calls the “let them eat quinoa” crowd. I’m personally suspicious of these responses, as I am of a lot of the contributions in online debate these days. Thanks to increasingly sophisticated AI, such conversations are now so heavily infiltrated with bots pushing the Enemy’s agenda that it wouldn’t at all surprise me to discover that these unhelpful comments were not being offered by real people in good faith.

But let’s suppose some of them genuine: what an extraordinary capitulation to the Enemy they represent! What these “I’m all right Jack!” types are saying is that they’re perfectly comfortable with everyone else having their diet toxified by government fiat because, hey, they are privy to the secret mysteries that give them the special tricks they need to stay alive while the ignorant masses get sick and die.

Is there not something a bit gnostic/Masonic elite about this position?

And do they really care so little about the plight of ordinary people?

I’m Awake. I know about the importance of a good diet - avoiding seed oils, refined sugar, and, now, products made with contaminated flour - but I also know that, sadly, this is very much a minority preoccupation. Most of the people I encounter every day, including some friends and family, are going to be ingesting quantities of folic acid from now on because they know no better. This doesn’t give me a feeling of “serves you right!” smugness. Rather, it makes me feel horrified at all the extra debilitating health problems these poor saps are now going to have piled on top of the ones they already suffer from having taken those multiple shots.

Nor am I persuaded by the idea that taking or not taking folic acid is really going to be such a doddle. What about, as I did the other day at my Dad’s wake, you find yourself in a situation where the only eating option is sandwiches? You gonna sit there, superior and judgy and antisocial, while everyone else nibbles away.

Or what if you’re out and about - travelling long distances, maybe even flying - and you’re starving and you need to grab something quick, and there’s nothing available that doesn’t involve bread?

Or you’re being friendly and you are meeting someone for coffee in one of those artisanal bakery cafes that are so desperately fashionable right now, among the young especially. Are you going to be the kill-joy who says: “None of those award winning croissants for me, thank you very much. And none of that sourdough either. My body is my temple. And oh, by the way, you do realise that coffee is really shit for you too?”

No. The only decent response to this folic acid abomination is to call it out for what it is: a calculating, cynical act of the purest evil.

The case against compulsory folic acid is unanswerable: which is why the functionaries pushing this legislation through made damn sure they didn’t have to answer it. They forced through the regulation by Statutory Instrument, meaning that no one, either in or outside parliament, had any chance to object.

Clare Craig wants everyone to sign her petition asking the government to reconsider. I’ve signed out of solidarity - but not in the belief that it will make the slightest bit of difference. The government - though of course, it was never really their decision: they’re just minions - know that all they have to do is brazen it out and lie relentlessly and eventually the problem will disappear.

How do they get away with this?

Because most people still trust the System. They have been brought up to believe, for example, that if their government forces through new legislation effectively mandating the consumption of a particular man-made substance there’s just no way something like that would happen if it weren’t basically OK for us. So: no need to kick up too much of a fuss; if it were really that bad someone would be doing something about it.

We Awake types may rail at this state of affairs as much as we like. But this - even after all those lessons everyone supposedly learned during ‘Covid’ - remains the default state of the vast majority of the population. They’re like turkeys gobbling contentedly in their pen, as Thanksgiving or Christmas approaches, fully confident that good old Farmer Giles has got their back because he’s a lovely guy with a jolly smile and feeds them regularly - and killing turkeys just isn’t something someone like that would do. “I mean, if he were, we’d know, right?” you can imagine one turkey saying. “Oh bloody hell, absolutely. And you’ve got to remember, with all these rules and regulations about treatment of farmyard animals, and all this vegetarianism that’s so fashionable now, I doubt it would even be legal for him to kill us, even he wanted to”, Turkey Two would sagely reply.

This is just the kind of misplaced trust that the baddies who run the world find so very useful when they’re trying to get one over on us. They can rely on us not to read the small print. That’s because we assume that someone else will already have done it on our behalf. A lawyer maybe: one of those lawyers who are really into justice, as of course so many lawyers are. Or a scientific expert at one of those regulatory organisations that scrutinise medicines, food safety and so on. Or a campaigning journalist: they can always be relied on to speak truth to power! Or maybe an opposition MP seizing the opportunity to show up government incompetence.

The problem with all these saviour figures is that they don’t actually exist. Or rather they do - but only in the collective imagination. This collective imagination is a figment conjured up by an eco-system - education; the entertainment industry; the media - designed by the elites with the primary purpose of keeping the useless folic acid eaters in a state of deluded complacency.

To understand all this is, like fear of the Lord, the beginning of wisdom.

But we’re currently still so lamentably far from attaining universal enlightenment that even some of our doughtiest campaigners aren’t quite with the programme.

Clare Craig for example. I think she’s decent, honest, hard-working and sincere. It must have taken great courage for her, as a senior pathologist working in the NHS, to speak out against some of the Establishment bullshit on ‘Covid.’ I’m grateful to her for the work she has done to expose the folic acid scam.

Still, I understand the reservations of more hardcore Awake types. Craig maintains that ‘Covid’ was a genuine new virus and not, as I believe and probably most of you believe, that it was a fake crisis cooked up in order to push vaccines. My guess here is that Craig is still to some extent a product of what the French call “la deformation professionelle.” That is, while she has tried in good faith to distance herself from the more egregious dishonesties of the medical establishment, she still can’t help subscribing to some of its shibboleths because that’s how she was trained.

She also believes in the official Holocaust narrative. I don’t, which prompted Craig to accuse me of taking contrary positions just to gain attention. This is unfair and untrue but I don’t hold it against her because I consider her unwitting slander to be a classic example of what I call a ‘Normie Cope.’

A Normie Cope is how people with at least one foot in the mainstream invariably respond when you tell them something ‘conspiratorial’ that clashes with their ingrained belief system. Rather than engage with what you are saying, rather than consider the awful possibility that you might be correct, they find an excuse simply to wave away your message so as to stay living within the paradigm they find so comforting.

There’s a gem of a Substack essay by Unbekoming on this subject which I highly recommend called The Guards Who Love You. Using the movie The Truman Show as its revelation-of-the-method model, it explains why mothers submit their babies to vaccine schedules even when all their maternal instincts tell them that this is what has been injuring their child. Like Truman they have been trained not to believe the evidence of their own eyes.

It is subtitled ‘An Essay on Why the Evidence Doesn’t Wake Anyone Up.’ What it has to say about mothers and vaccines applies equally well to the subject of folic acid. In both cases, we have a near-compulsory faux-medical intervention whose benefits have never convincingly been proven but whose detriments are legion and well documented. And in both cases we have a prevailing culture which not only doggedly insists that the serial killer isn’t a threat but which actually leaves the back door unlocked, with a welcome note on the mat, and arrows pointing upstairs with a message saying: “I’m ASLEEP. In the bedroom.”

Is it not the purest definition of insanity that we allow ourselves to be culled in this way?

Well, yes. You could see it like that But that would be to blame the victim for the Mafia boss’s crime, which I don’t think is really fair.

The reason we go on allowing all this bad stuff to happen to us - fluoride in the water supply, folic acid in our bread, death jabs in our babies’ arms - is not because we’re innately stupid and lazy and gullible and compliant and deserving of everything that’s coming to us but because the Predator Class which feeds on us trained us to be this way.

The Predators took some of our best qualities - selflessness, optimism, a desire to shape an even better world for our children - and used them as a weapon against us. They sold these pharmaceutical inventions to us as ‘progress’ - something we should all get behind. They rebranded “adulteration” as “fortification”, using the magical powers inherent in language to persuade us that a poison would actually make us stronger. They used lobby groups and compliant newspaper Health Pages (in truth just the propaganda wing of Big Pharma) and the healthcare system repeatedly to bang home the message that folic acid is the essential prerequisite of healthy motherhood.

I’m not a pregnant mother and am not likely to be one. But even when you’re not the target market, it’s one of the most relentlessly enforced messages in public health. I think I was probably still at school - we’re talking the late Seventies, here - when I first heard of the (extremely rare) condition of spina bifida. Certainly by the time my own wife was pregnant, I would have been as mad keen as any other concerned husband to make sure she was taking those vital folic acid supplements as recommended by all doctors and nurses and the telly.

How do you resist this brainwashing? It’s not easy. Especially if you’ve been taught to think that brainwashing only exists in spy movies like The Ipcress File and The Manchurian Candidate.

Clare Craig says that the folic acid issue is ultimately an ‘ethical’ one.

“For the majority, in the absence of a benefit, the risk will outweigh the benefit.”

It’s a fair point but it’s one that concedes too much territory to the enemy. What it does is to reduce the issue to a cosy, sixth-form-level debate about moral philosophy: is it ethical that a medical intervention targeted at a minority should be allowed to impinge on the health of the majority? What are the acceptable limits of state power? etc.

Worse, it hints at the theoretical possibility that there really do exist forms of medication which, if forced on us by state fiat, might under certain circumstances exert a beneficial effect on some sections of the populace. Which I doubt very much. Not if I know anything at all about Rockefeller/Carnegie medicine.

No. The much more important point - indeed the only point that really matters, because everything else, frankly, is like trying to defeat the Minotaur by attempting to reason him out of his carnivorous voraciousness by quoting the Cretan legal code - is this: yet again They are deliberately poisoning us.

They are not poisoning us because - whoops! - they didn’t have access to the full information that might have enabled them to reach a better decision. They are not poisoning us because they’re a bit shaky on the concept of cost/benefit analysis. They are not poisoning us because they love babies and unborn children more than anything because they’re just so cute and important and, like, the future.

They are poisoning us because they want more of us to get sick and die.

That’s it. It’s really that simple.

And the more we contrive to persuade ourselves it’s not that simple, the easier we make their job and the longer we postpone the inevitable reckoning.

“How did you manage to keep it together at your Dad’s funeral?” some sympathetic souls have kindly asked. This was in response to a recent piece I wrote on the experience of delivering my father’s eulogy. I thought, rather than reply individually, that I would turn into it into another article which some of you might find helpful.

1. Celebrate the life rather than mourn the death

When I was planning my father’s funeral service, my immediate thought was to choose lots of appropriately sad music: Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’; poignant hymns like The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, Is Ended; and so on. Luckily I realised that this would probably be a mistake.

At a funeral, the congregation is already sad enough that someone they love has died. You really don’t need to twist the knife by tormenting them with music guaranteed to reduce them to tears: the tears will flow quite naturally anyway.

So for the intro music, I chose something jaunty: The Dambusters March by Eric Coates. As well as being an affectionate nod to my Dad’s National Service career (when he served in the RAF), it’s a popular, jolly, sturdy tune that puts a smile on your face. This made wheeling the coffin down the aisle much less painful.

You probably need one solemn, slow hymn to acknowledge the gravity of the moment. My father had already settled this by naming Eternal Father, Strong to Save as his chosen hymn in the Death Book we gave him to fill in, at his leisure, while he was still alive and well. (Death Books are very useful. Every elderly person should have one: they’re your last chance to declare how you want to be buried, who you want delivering your eulogy, etc. They also forestall family arguments after you are gone: your wishes having been expressed, the decision already made).

But one depressing hymn is enough. The others should be rousing ones that offer everyone the chance to sing their hearts out and relieve some of that pent up emotion. We agreed on Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer and Jerusalem. We did wonder whether it was really appropriate to include two such belters. But Gary, the excellent vicar at Christ Church, Malvern, confirmed them as suitable choices. A funeral service, he explained, needs to move in waves: a quiet, contemplative, mournful bit in the middle, book-ended by outbursts of life-affirming, death-conquering exultation.

We played the old man out to the tune of JSB’s Sheep May Safely Graze. I mean, it’s such a classic why would you not?

2. Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

From the moment I woke up on the day of my father’s funeral, I knew I had but one mission: to give my beloved Daddy the send off he deserved. Just writing that word ‘Daddy’ has brought tears to my eyes, which is why it certainly wasn’t going to be allowed to sneak into my eulogy. My job was not to feel sorry for myself but to deliver an oration worthy of the man.

Also, I’m the eldest sibling. When you are the first born - of five - it’s a job for life. No matter how much your brothers and sisters may subsequently eclipse you in terms of fame, fortune or distinction, whenever you gather together you will always instinctively observe the pecking order you had as children. Therefore, as top dog, you have to set an example. You have to be like a Napoleonic-era naval captain on the quarterdeck of his ship-of-the-line. No matter if there is carnage all around you as your decks are swept with grape, your masts are shattered and your ensign is shredded into a tattered rag. Others may fall but you must keep a cool head.

3. Pretend It’s Not Happening

Of course, keeping a cool head is easier said than done. But for me it seemed to follow quite naturally from my decision to prioritise my delivery of the eulogy. I entered a kind of trance state in which I felt at one remove from the events around me. When the hearse rolled up with my father’s coffin inside, for example, I quickly fought off thoughts like: “Oh no. That’s my dead Pa in there and he’s not coming back.” Instead, I thought, “Gosh. This is all so intense I’m not even going to try to process it. I’m going to act as if it’s more like a dream.”

It works really well as a strategy, I find. The only problem is afterwards when you realise you haven’t really dealt with any of the emotional issues that might have been alleviated had you allowed yourself to sob and weep. Just now I had a relapse of my various ongoing health problems. Michelle, my wonderful osteo, said my cranial rhythms were so constricted it was as if I were suffering from concussion. She ascribed this - because she had come across it before with other patients - to unresolved grief.

4. Be a Christian

You should try this sometime, if you haven’t already. Having a strong Christian faith makes SUCH a big difference to how you see death. Not for one second, no not for one fraction of a second, have I imagined that I’m not going to be reunited with my father again at the Resurrection. This is a great comfort to me.

I realise that to an atheist this will seem merely like a delusional cope. But crazy as it may seem, we Christians genuinely believe this stuff. It’s not a position we’ve merely adopted because the Bible tells us so or because we find it to be an agreeable way of dealing with the fact that we’re all gonna die. No. Knowing that there’s an afterlife, that death has been conquered through Christ’s sacrifice, is the essence of everything we think and do. We don’t feel superior to those who think otherwise. Just a bit sorry for them because, goodness, it must be hard living in a world as increasingly demanding as this one and believing that this is all there is.

5. You Need Dick

Among the qualities I didn’t inherit from my father were a meticulous attention to detail and ability to organise things. Luckily my brother Dick did, which is why things went so smoothly. In military terms, I would be the greenhorn platoon commander desperate to find new ways of getting all his men shot; Dick is the grizzled sergeant who makes sure they don’t.

I had just two jobs - funeral service; eulogy - while Dick took upon himself at least a dozen, from collecting copies of death certificates, informing the various utilities, and booking the church and the grave slot, organising the wake - and the music and photos and sound equipment for our Dick and James tribute - to the tricksy business of dealing with a landlord who, understandably, would much prefer it if the estate went on paying rent for all eternity.

This is the advantage of coming from a large family where there is a range of children with different skill sets. I always knew that having lots of brothers and sisters was a blessing. But I never knew quite how much till my father’s death brought us all together more closely than ever.

So that’s my final piece of advice. If you can and it’s not too late: have lots of children!