Back from the Dead
April 24th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
P: Mr T in DC on flickr
I’ve just spent a very nice month on the arts desk of the Financial Times, doing work experience for my journalism course. Towards the end, they asked me to write up “The List”, a weekly 4/500 word thing that can be on absolutely anything, but preferably topical. Little things like ’5 fictional languages’ or ’5 unusual flags’, fun stuff.
So I wrote it, and I filed it. And then I got a very nice, very sweet chat from the editor, who was very complimentary but asked if I could try again and come up with something less… *long pause* “offensive.”
Apparently the largely Christian readership of the very straight FT may get upset if, on Easter weekend, we print a piece called “TOP FIVE PEOPLE WHO CAME BACK FROM THE DEAD”.
Fair enough. But I’m never one to let an inappropriate idea go to waste, so for the day that’s in it, I present to you my findings. Happy Easter kids.
Bobby Ewing
When it comes to defying the natural laws of life, death and credible plot-writing, nobody does it like Dallas. Their prize-worthy study in mortality came at the end of season eight, when Pam Barnes awoke to find her lover Bobby Ewing in the shower.
Perplexingly for poor Pam, Bobby had died in a hit-and-run a year previous, after actor Patrick Duffy decided to pursue film acting. His death and resurrection (and subsequently everything that had happened in his year-long absence) was explained away as a bad dream.
A week may be a long time in politics, but seemingly in soapland, whole years can go by without consequence. Now let us never mention it again.
Jamie Ogg
In 2010, an Australian woman went into labour prematurely, delivering twins at just 27 weeks. While the female infant Emily survived, doctors failed to save Kate and David Ogg’s son Jamie. Devastated, his parents were given his tiny body to say goodbye.
Cradling her son on her chest, Kate cuddled and spoke to him. For two hours she held his limp frame, before Jamie unexpectedly started to show signs of life. From small gasps, he eventually opened his eyes and began to move his head around, before reaching out and grabbing her finger.
Baffled doctors believe the mother’s body acted as a natural incubator, and the couple, along with their healthy twins, have since appeared on Australian TV to promote the benefits of the approach, known as skin-to-skin care.
‘Lord’ Timothy Dexter
Timothy Dexter was a self-styled ‘Lord’ and widely acknowledged eccentric who lived in New England in the 18th century.
Morbidly curious about what people would say about him after his death, the writer and businessman staged a rehearsal of his own funeral and watched from nearby, as invited guests went through the motions of eulogising him, and carrying his coffin to the grand tomb he had built (where he often took naps).
Planning to reveal himself at the end, he noticed that his wife had not shed a single tear, and so remained hidden. Guests became aware of his presence at the wake, through the cries of his wife from the kitchen, where Dexter was beating her for not showing sufficient sorrow.
Philip Sessarego/Tom Carew
In 2001, Newsnight broadcast an interview with Tom Carew, an author who claimed to be an ex-member of the SAS. Not so, said Newsnight, for this man was actually Philip Sessarego, a fantasist who held a life-long SAS obsession, and who had faked his own death in Bosnia in 1993. Watching at home, Sessarego’s children watched agape as their long-dead father was exposed as a fraudster.
Pseudocide is the official term for faking your own death, though it’s usually employed to escape debt or danger in the life you have. Most people who do it don’t tend to write books and agree to appear on national television. Sessarego never reconnected with his children, and a decomposed body believed to be his was found in a Belgian garage in 2009.
