A career in TV taught Simon Booker how to handle drama and tight schedules. That skill comes in handy as a humanist celebrant
Simon Booker left his mother’s funeral feeling he had done the best job he could. “I had my producer’s head on,” he says – he used to work in radio and TV – “as well as my grieving son head on. I was very control-freaky about it.” In particular, he was pleased with the humanist celebrant and “tucked the idea away for this phase of life – my third act”.
That was in 2010. Booker is 67 now, and last summer he enrolled on a training course for celebrants, run by Humanists UK. There he was, for two weekends, learning and performing dummy funeral ceremonies for his peers.
