A team of researchers is investigating the changing social trends displayed at modern funerals. Sue Adamson looks surprisingly cheerful considering she has attended 18 funerals since October, and she expects to attend another 30 this year.

Thankfully, Adamson had not seen uncommonly large numbers of friends or family struck down - in fact, the research fellow from University of Hull in northern England had never met any of the people whose funerals she attended.

The idea came from Margaret Holloway, professor of social work at Hull and the project’s principal investigator, who realised that although she often read articles about funerals in the media, she rarely saw reference to them in academic journals. Funerals began to change when the role of religion in society shifted.

The first step was to persuade local undertakers and funeral parlours to co-operate. “Luckily, the professionals involved in the industry have been really interested in our work,” says Holloway. “They’re central to the project’s aims - to increase public understanding of funerals, and to help the professionals who work around death to be more sensitive to mourners’ needs.” Tastes in funerals do seem to be changing. Alongside live jazz and a bagpiper, the academics have heard a lot of Abba, the Beatles, Elvis and Barry White. Only three of the funerals so far included hymns sung by the congregation. One family chose Red Red Robin, says Adamson, “because the deceased had been a Hull Kingston Rovers [rugby] supporter, and at the funeral mourners wore the red and white [team] colours. Another family chose Walk Through This World With Me because it had been the ringtone

on the deceased’s mobile phone.” Humour in services seems to play an increasing part. These days there seems to be a move away from a focus on grief — and from religion, says Holloway.

“Although today’s society has largely let go of old traditions, the funerals we’ve seen all suggest an enduring need for ritual, whether that’s bagpipes or the case of one 96-year-old woman who had planned the outfit she wanted to wear in her coffin. Human beings still seem to want to find new ways to give death some kind of order.”