Words at a funeral carry more weight than almost anything else you'll ever hear in a room. They have to be true, they have to be personal, and they have to honour someone's entire life in just a few minutes.

Below you'll find examples of my tribute writing, delivered at services I've led, though I’ve also been commissioned to write tributes for others to read. Some names have been changed for privacy.

Reading words on a page only tells you so much, though. A tribute lives in the way it's spoken: the pace of it, where it breathes, where it slows down. If you'd like to hear how I actually deliver one, press play on the audio below, and you'll get a better sense of what I bring into the room.

Every person I've written for has been different. Different lives, different humour, different things that needed saying.

Rosemary

Rosemary was a summer person, even in February.

The kind who'd find a reason to be outside, always somewhere between here and the next interesting thing, coat half-on, shoes already muddy, heading somewhere that probably didn't need heading to, but going anyway because the going was the point.

Rosemary had Spike Milligan's gift, and loved his silly poetry, that wonderful refusal to take the serious things too seriously, and the equally wonderful ability to find something worth giggling at in places most people walked straight past. A sign in a shop window. A pigeon doing something undignified. The fact that words like "blancmange" exist at all.

And she walked, just because the world was there and it seemed rude not to look at it properly.

That's how Rosemary will be remembered. Somewhere in the warmth of a Tuesday afternoon when really it was snowing, and finding it absolutely wonderful.

She asked for some Spike Milligan to be read at her funeral, and so I’ve found a short piece of prose, one of his best, or possibly silliest, you decide…

I must go down to the sea again,

The lonely sea in the sky,

I left my socks and pants there,

I wonder if they’re dry.

Elizabeth

Elizabeth didn't necessarily live loudly, but she certainly lived meaningfully. She gave without keeping score. She chose family at every turn. She danced, she swam, she mothered, she grand-mothered, she laughed, she loved Bowie, she loved Arsenal, and she absolutely adored the people in this room.

Life, to Elizabeth, was simple. You show up. You love your people. You keep the things that matter, even if maybe they're a bit odd. You take the brave path when it's needed. And you leave behind a world that's softer because you walked through it.

And if she could hear this now, I think she'd smile… maybe straighten those yellow socks… and hum the tune of the one song she always returned to, the one about a Starman waiting in the sky.

Nigel

Nigel was clearly loved, and you can tell that by the messages on Facebook from people in a town who knew him, even if he didn’t perhaps know them.

From Kelly: He was a character who meant so much to so many people. No matter how rubbish your day had been, a whoopee from Nigel would always make you smile.

From Daniel: Legend. His story is an example of why not to judge people by their covers.

From Sarah: He used to go into the Vodafone shop and shout “it’s for you hoooo” and then into the opticians and say “I can see you”... Always made me smile. Rest easy.

Nigel didn’t live a tidy life. But he lived a very visible one. He was known. He was noticed. He was himself.

And I think this comment from someone called Martin, another of the many messages across so many posts about Nigel probably supports that…

“He had that bread bag on his head, like it was the most normal thing in the world. I remember thinking, well, that’s Nigel. Of course he does.”