THE ALTERNATIVE UNDERTAKER

From clifftop ceremonies to campervan-driven vigils and funeral pyres, Rupert Callender s revolutionising the 'bad theatre' that characterises the business of death in modern Britain

- Jane Warren

RUPERT Callender is not your usual funeral director. You won't find him trying to up-sell mahogany coffins from a catalogue while juggling appointments with the bereaved.

And as he admits, much of the rigmarole surrounding the rituals of modern death frankly appal him.

"Quite often, all these add-ons come at the expense of the content," he says. "But for me it's all about content and a good funeral can be really minimal." In the simplest terms, this can mean two or three people standing around a grave with "not a lot going on apart from honest conversation".

Yet, Rupert, 54, also believes that at their most opulent, funerals can be something way beyond the stilted formality of a traditional Victorian-style service. To this end, he's carried coffins across windswept beaches, sat in pubs with caskets on beer-stained tables and helped children fire flaming arrows into their father's funeral pyre.

No wonder he's been called the world's first "punk undertaker".

Now, the owner of The Green Funeral Company has written a lyrical and inspiring book about how we are, as a culture, getting the business of death all wrong.

Rupert insists that much of what is on offer from commercial funeral parlours with their hefty mark-ups on fancy vehicles and chipboard coffins finished with fake handles - the reason why pallbearers carry them on their shoulders - is little more than what he calls "cosmetic aesthetics".

"There is a lot of bad theatre in the business of death and people go along with it because they think funerals are supposed to be like this," says Callender.

"Imagine a farmer who spent his working life outdoors dressed in a kind of celestial choirboy chic that he wouldn't have been seen dead in when he was alive... The corporate idea of something alternative is a Disney theme for a child." In the larger chains, it's unlikely that the body will actually be kept at the funeral directors before the funeral.