Sandy Hobbs | Letters to Ambrose Merton # 20, 1999

Lena Zavaroni died on Friday, 1st October 1999, at the age of 35. According to the Sunday Mail newspaper (3rd October 1999) she was “discovered” as a singer at the age of nine by the television programme Opportunity Knocks. She made a hit record, Ma, he’s makin’ eyes at me, and appeared before the Queen in the Royal Variety Show at the age of twelve, However, when 13 she developed anorexia nervosa. At 16 years of age she weighed only four stones. Her career faltered, a marriage failed and at the time of her death, according to the Sunday Herald (3rd October 1999) she was living in poverty in a council house. She died following surgery aimed at treating her anorexia.

On Tuesday 12th October, The Diary, a light-hearted column in The Herald newspaper published in Glasgow, contained the following brief item:

We hear that Lena Zavaroni has left £3m in her will. But it’s all in luncheon vouchers.

The Diary is credited to two journalists, Tom Shields and Ken Smith. The following day, 13th October, it contained a contribution signed by Tom Shields alone. It read in part:

The atrocious comment about Lena Zavaroni in yesterday’s Diary was my responsibility or, more accurately, irresponsibility. My colleague Ken Smith, expressed severe reservations. Others thought the reference frankly appalling and advised against putting it in print. I did not listen to them. I have worked on the basis that a good way of writing a Diary column is to tell the stories the way you might relate them to your pals in the pub. This wee item sounded fine in the pub. Obviously it should have been left in the pub. Or left unsaid. Perhaps I have been too long writing this Diary column.

He concluded by apologizing to the Zavaroni family “who will be burying Lina on Friday”. The following day, 14th October, the newspaper published four letters from readers criticizing it for carrying the joke. They were accompanied by an editorial apology. One of the letters referred to a previous “joke” in the Diary about the murder of the television presenter, Jill Dando.

However, on 15th October, a further letter in a somewhat different tone appeared:

The Lena Zavaroni item in Tom Shields’s Diary was in poor taste but he’s apologised and that should be the end of it. To be as consistently funny as the Diary you have to walk a thin line, and sometimes you’ll step over. But the predictable outcry from some of your correspondents is part of a worrying trend. It seems now that we are all supposed to fall in line with an emotional reaction to any news… We are expected to respond emotionally about people we have never met and know nothing about. Look at the ridiculous outpourings when Princess Diana died. Or the mounds of flowers which now descend at the scene of any public death, whether it’s a train crash or one person’s suicide off a motorway bridge.

There is much in this for the student of contemporary folklore to ponder. Tom Shields’s description of how he approaches the Diary work explains why his column is a rich source of modern lore and humour. He also reveals that the joke was being told in the pub within days of the death, This is a fact, pleasant or not. It was clearly objectionable to print it where friends and family could see it, but we cannot avoid the fact that people do exchange black humour in the aftermath of the death of famous people. I doubt whether the author of the last letter is right in referring to a “trend” in the treatment of prominent people. Consider past media accounts of the death of royalty, and the flowers placed at the scene of a tragedy are surely an example of a genuinely popular, or “folk”, response to being confronted by violent death.