Doing funerals is better than doing an acoustic gig any day

In Liverpool, Brian Nash [from Frankie Goes to Hollywood] - Nasher - is a very good funeral celebrant.

'I tell you, doing funerals is better than doing an acoustic gig any day,' he says, 'because at least every cunt shuts up while you're talking, and there's no on standing at the bar with beer bottles chatting shit cos they're full of coke.'

 N. Duerden, Exit stage left: the curious afterlife of popstars (2022), 112

It is bribing the Pulpit to give a good character to persons who may not deserve it

They have in this county a funeral Sermon to every Corpse which I do not approve of much for it is bribing the Pulpit to give a good character to persons who may not deserve it. It is paying the Clergyman for supressing the notice of the bad qualities of the deceased and speaking only of the good. This is not properly holding him forth as an example to be followed, for his neighbours will  recall what he really was and imagine they may go as they please and still get a good name at their death.

W. Holland, Paupers and pig killers: the diary of William Holland 1799-1818, ed. J. Ayres (1984), 90-91 [Monday October 3 1803]

There is nothing like a morning funeral for sharpening the appetite for lunch

There is nothing like a morning funeral for sharpening the appetite for lunch ... We had been burying, I am sad to say, my father and I mean no disrespect to the dead when I suggest how greatly preferable the aftermath of a funeral is to that of a wedding.

A. Marshall, Life's rich pageant (1984), 1