One two three, one two three

Last night I was thinking about how my sudden death would be a bad thing. It's not something I spend a lot of time thinking about, if I'm honest. But last night events conspired to remind me that an unexpected shuffling off the mortal coil would be a source of huge buggeration to all and sundry. Mixed in with no small amount of personal embarrasment for yours truly, too.

What made me think this way? Well, it was mainly to do with the dodgy DVD I was carrying in my coat pocket.

Stop right there. I know what you're thinking and you should be ashamed of yourself. If you must know, the disc in question was a video of a concert by Andre Rieu. Actually, I'm not sure if that makes matters any better, come to think of it.

For those of you who have yet to come across him, this Rieu character is a violinist who appears to specialise in (a) fronting an orchestra that plays gentle classics, mainly Viennese waltzes, and (b) attempting to bring the mullet back into fashion.

He first came to my attention in the run-up to Christmas when his vaguely-scary smiling face could be seen in any number of adverts for his CDs and DVDs. He has this facial expression that brought back memories of Richard Clayderman at his evil worst. Regency-style clothing and waltzing couples lurked menacingly in the background. I shudder to think of it.

It's really not my cup of warm beverage at all. I would like to make that abundantly clear. But my sainted mother likes him, which is why brother number 2 bought her the afore-mentioned DVD for Christmas. It wasn't playing properly on her machine, so I offered to test it on my player. Which is how I came to be ferrying it home as discreetly as possible last night.

I'd tried to hide it as I ran from her house to the car. But as I was driving home I wondered what would happen if, for instance, I was involved in some freak accident. What would those finding me think? They would turn over my belongings to my grieving next-of-kin. Katie would be initially shocked and puzzled by the Andre Rieu DVD secreted in my pocket.

"My God," she would say. "This is terrible. I never knew about this at all. I can't explain it. He must have kept it from me. You think you know someone...." And I would be unable to set the record straight.

But that wouldn't have been the worst of it. Guided by some unspoken need, my sorrowful relatives would probably want to show some form of understanding. I can just imagine the curtain closing around my casket and the congregation filing out of the crematorium to the gentle strains of The Blue Danube Waltz.

It's just too horrible a thought to comprehend.