Putting the 'Fun' In Funeral
I worked for a couple of years at a firm of undertakers. Most grieving relatives thought we were the paragon of virtue but would they have choked on their post funeral vol-au-vents if they had know of the following malpractises.

1) A young drunk funeral director who photographed himself naked with an also naked corpse of a recently departed local councilor. He had adjusted her face into a gurning smirk, placed a raw haddock in her mouth and and a multicoloured clown wig on her head. It looked like a promotional photo for the Little and Large Summer tour.

2) The Funeral Director who stole all the gold fillings from a deceased businessman's mouth and had a large, and I felt, rather unsightly sovereign ring forged from it by a goldsmith in the next town.

3) We used to provide a cremation service as well. Quite often the ashes would get spilt or lost, so we'd burn off a pile of newspapers in the furnace and fill an urn with that. Relatives would sometimes question why their deceased relatives had been cremated with a copy of Razzle.

4) Have you ever wondered what funeral directors keep under their top hats? Well one of my colleagues kept 2 smoked salmon rolls, a bag of smiths salt and shake and a yorkie bar. One summer, the yorkie melted, and rivulets of chocolate dripped down his head and into his eyes, making it look like he had a small creature under there which was having some sort of dirty protest.

5) When the mortuary was out of space, we used to dress the deceased up in evening wear and leave them propped up around the showroom, to make them look like customers. Every so often some doddery old codger would try and hold a conversation with one, and would be slightly non-plussed when one of my colleagues would turn up and load the body onto a sack barrow to take them into the chapel.
(Vic Flange, Thu 27 Sep 2007, 16:26, Reply)