A good few years ago, I was having dinner with the TV and radio presenter Richard Bacon and I was scrolling through the contacts in my mobile phone to find a number. In so doing, I came across the details of a couple of friends of mine who were. I just couldn’t bear to delete their numbers. It seemed so final, like another, smaller, death.
I mused on this, and asked Richard, wistfully: “How long after someone has died do you have to wait before removing their details from your phone?” “That’s a very interesting question,” he said. “I think I’ll tweet that.” “Well, don’t forget to credit me,” I responded, cheekily. And so he tweeted exactly this, to his hundreds of thousands of followers: “How long after someone has died do you delete their contact details @simon kelner.” This rather inelegant tweet led some people to believe I was the dead person, and the next thing that happened, almost immediately, was that a mutual friend of ours rang Richard.would pay for Kelner’s obituary?” was his question. “I’ve got some great stories.
I can’t say he was totally thrilled to find out I was still alive – freelance journalists need all the work they can get – but it did start me thinking. We should have got him to write the