The daily exchange of banter and jokes during my days at PBS always took place early in the morning when we shared our department’s one set of newspapers to help kick-start the work schedule. It was a standard procedure I took with me from my earlier newspaper habitat, where we were taught by the likes of Anton Cassar, Paul Carachi and Lino Spiteri to compare stories and count the cases where we came out either as winners or losers in the battle for daily headlines.
I tried to instil the same spirit of competition at the old Xandir Malta newsroom, but the effect obviously could not be the same. We were the only radio and TV newsroom competing with the print media guys and gals who, we often found, recorded most of our news and quickly made them their own. No problem there, though we would have appreciated being granted credit when due as is the generous custom today, but in terms of competition there could hardly be a comparison.
The procedure made even less sense when, disgruntled and embittered, I demanded and got a move to radio. Newspapers were only needed there to see what they were saying about us and our programmes, and I can tell you the first coffee of the day did not always go down too well. But the banter persisted.
I remember Charles Arrigo, the late broadcasting doyen then also on national radio, always started his newspaper session by reading the obituaries section. It was exactly the one corner of the newspaper I purposely overlooked in my daily scan. In any case, I knew I was bound to know who had gone yonder as Charles would either ring me or stride into my office with the words: “Aqta’ min miet?” (Guess who passed away?), which was one good way to avoid not going to funerals of friends and special acquaintances.
This reminiscence was provoked recently by the passing away of three men with a past connection, in varying degrees, to national broadcasting – Manuel Borg, the Radio Malta technician/presenter with a love for Italian music, Joe Mercieca, ex-Head of News, and, even more recently, Victor Cassar, cameraman, editor and director at the Department of Information, TVM and One TV. Going to their funerals brought back a flood of memories, with the obituaries anecdote taking top spot on the list.
Death is, of course, also a time for meditation and spiritual reawakening. It stretches one’s memory canvas to the limit, but there is also its lighter side that helps the process of easing the pain and strengthening the will to continue with the quest for life and personal fulfilment. Friends and colleagues who pass away leave behind them a trail of wonderful experiences, giving the inevitable sadness a tinge of human triumph over the excessive importance we all tend to give to life on earth.
One popular anonymous quip regarding funerals says that if you don’t go to people’s funerals, they won’t come to yours. I’ve regretfully missed a lot because of my instinctive tendency to ignore the obituaries, but I am of course happy in the knowledge they cannot, even if they wished, come to mine. There are those who insist that a damn good funeral is still one of our best and cheapest acts of theatre. It was more or less like that in the days before the recent strike by the dozen or so hearse owners who, it has been reported, are still anxiously waiting for the promised government subsidy, EU permitting.
Charles Dillingham and Florenz Ziegfield were both famous theatre producers when they acted as pallbearers at the funeral of the great escape artist, Houdini. As they lifted the beautiful and heavy casket to their shoulders, Dillingham is known to have whispered to Ziegfield, “Suppose he isn’t here.”
It has happily become the custom since many years now to ask people not to send flowers as a tribute to the deceased, but to give donations to charitable institutions and other worthy causes, including animal welfare, instead. However, some still resist, arguing that flowers give the funeral a touch of colour and some much-needed symbolism, a claim that cannot altogether be denied. In the sad old days of colonialism, a Chinese servant once asked permission of his master to attend the funeral of a friend, also Chinese. The man gave his permission and jokingly added: “I suppose you will follow the old Chinese custom of putting food on the grave.”
“Yes, sir,” was the humble answer.
“And,” still laughing, the master said, “When do you suppose your friend will eat the food?”
He was somewhat shaken out of his Western complacency when his servant replied: “As soon, sir, as the friend you buried last week will smell the flowers you put on his grave.”
On a more local note, though, a recent funeral service organised by the widow of an atheist, both foreigners, came to an end with her going on the roof of their Malta villa to spread his ashes (he was of course cremated overseas) with the help of the wind. As she blew the ashes away she uttered, much to the warmth and merriment of her and her husband’s friends: “Honey, this is the blow job I always promised.”
Manuel, Joe and Victor would have loved such attitudes to life and death. They were keen storytellers as much as they were great professionals. I am sure they don’t mind this camouflaged tribute to them.