Mourning glory

Princess Diana must have done wonders for Interflora - and Britain hasn't looked back since.

Ever since that carpet of flowers engulfed much of central London almost nine years ago in a show of public grief for the 'people's princess' (one part of the legacy Tony Blair probably wants to forget now), bouquets have appeared at the scene of virtually every crime or tragic occurrence.

What ever happened to the British stiff upper lip? Are we now a nation which simply mourns on queue?

I lost count last season the number of times I spent the first minute of a football match standing for a minute's silence, more often that not for a player not even remotley connected to the two clubs involved. I'm sure at some clubs, bookings for a minute's silence now outstrip requests for children to be mascots.

Once upon a time, a death for a journalist meant going out and doing the so-called 'death knock.' That's where you have to try and pursuade the relatives of dead person/people to have a chat with you. Some journalists say they 'want to write a tribute' to get a foot in the door, others just mumble and look pathetic in the hope those in mourning will feel sympathy for them. Even better if it's raining on the doorstep.

You'd go back to the office, write it up, preferably with a picture from the family, and that was that. But it now seems to be common place to follow it up with a news story talking about how many flowers have been left at the scene of the death. Forget lawyers being ambulance chasers, why not have florists advertising on the back of 999 vehicles?

How exactly does the flower thing work? Do you see something on the TV news which upsets you and ring interflora and ask for the nearest florist to drop off a bouquet of flowers? What exactly does that achieve, other than creating a distraction for drivers, thus increasing the risk of further tragedy on the road.

And it's not true that flowers are only left by people who knew the deceased. In Liverpool, rumours started spreading that a body had been found in a park. It was a baby, the local gossip said. Flowers began piling up at the scene, all with cards expressing sympathy and grief at the tragedy. The Liverpool Echo the next day had got to the bottom of the story: it was a chicken carcus.

Take this tragic five-month-old who died after being savaged by dogs at the weekend. Outside the pub where she died is a three-foot teddy bear. Why? What purpose will that serve? To remind her parents of what they've lost? It seems to me like one-upmanship. S/he who leaves the most at the scene, cares the most.

Grief on cue. Then there was old Richard Hammond last week. Within hours of it breaking on the news, people were gathering outside his hospital in Leeds, waiting for news. Surely you only go to hospital to check up on someone if you actually know them, as opposed to recognising their face off the TV. Flowers soon were piling up outside the hospital. At one point, it felt as if people were going through the motions of mourning his death even though he hadn't actually died.

But thank God common sense prevailed. It had to, really, because of Jeremy Clarkson's involvement in this. People who like him don't suffer silly gestures for the sake of it.

Instead of token gestures, people rallied round and used their concern to good effect: raising money for the Yorkshire air ambulance. £150k in two days to pay for a new chopper. And what's more, it looks like 'Hamster' is going to be ok. Whether he'll get back into a 300mph car again is another matter (indeed, see tomorrow for more on this).

Perhaps after the Diana effect, we'll now get the Hammond effect - where some good acutally comes from concern instead of pointless bundles of bouquets, which are left to droop and rot.

And I'm pretty certain no-one deserves to have their last place on earth marked by few brown stems.