The race is run

THE funeral of President George HW Bush was a moving, solemn occasion this week, with heartfelt eulogies showing that not everything in the United States these days is crass and unpleasant. We decided to look at how The Diary has regarded Scottish funerals in the past where humour has shone even amongst the heartache – such as the funeral in Ayr of a popular local where a friend praised the departed's "contribution to sick animals" in his eulogy. He then added: "But he didn't know they were sick when he backed them.”

Down in flames

A BEARSDEN reader once told us about the organist at a funeral he attended playing the rousing Dambusters March as the mourners were leaving the crematorium. When the undertaker asked why he chose the music the organist rather smugly replied that he had noticed that the deceased had a floral arrangement spelling out Biggles and assumed that was his nickname as a former RAF pilot.

The undertaker shook his head and told him: "You were half correct. It was a nickname – he was known as Big Les.”

Nippy

THERE was also the story of the gravediggers at a Highland funeral in deep winter stamping their feet to keep warm as they waited for the service to be finished so they could complete their job. As the mourners left, one of them asked the freezing gravediggers if they liked a dram. When they eagerly answered in the affirmative, the mourner pointed at the grave and told them: "Well, let that be a dreadful warning to you.”

Tuned in

A READER also told us of a Scottish funeral service where the poignancy of the occasion was enhanced by a lone piper playing a lament outside the church as the mourners went in. The moment was perhaps spoiled, she told us, by a colleague of the deceased, who had flown up from London, who muttered as he saw the piper: "Damn buskers. Don't they know there's a time and a place?

Drink to that

AFTER the funeral of a popular pub landlord in Argyll, a local told The Diary: "As his death was sudden, police attended, and a family member, anxious about the legal status of the alcohol licence, particularly with a wake to cater for, asked for advice. He was relieved to be told that, in the circumstances, there ought not to be an immediate problem as, technically, the licensee was still on the premises."

Tart response

WE believe that the late Irish comic Frank Carson would have chuckled if he knew, as a reader relayed to us after Frank's death, that BBC Scotland, in the subtitles during a news bulletin, should have reported that Frank's funeral took place "at a mass in Belfast in a Roman Catholic church where he also received a Protestant blessing".

The subtitles on the screen interpreted this as "at a mass in Belfast in a Roman Catholic church where he also received a prostitute's blessing”.

No going back

A MOURNER once told us that she attended a funeral in Glasgow, and not knowing the directions, used a sat nav app on her mobile phone to get her there. Unfortunately when she popped it in her handbag on arrival she had not switched the app off properly. As she walked in past the coffin, fellow mourners were startled by an electronic voice announcing: "You have reached your final destination."

Your funeral

AN AYRSHIRE reader was at his golf club where a senior member declared: "I was watching the adverts during daytime television. Surely nothing says you don't trust your family than pre-paying for your funeral.”

Without a prayer

WE were told that when a member of a Glasgow gangster family was killed, his brother said to the local priest that he would donate £5000 to the church if he would say at the funeral that his brother had been a saint. It gave the priest quite a dilemma. So at the funeral he told the mourners that the dead man had indeed led a life of womanising, thieving and violence, but then added: "Mind you, compared to his brother he was a saint."