The time between the death of someone in the public eye and the publication of their obituary depends on how much of a surprise the death actually is. The papers do tend to write the obituary of elderly folk in advance, in order for it to hit the next day's paper. I know from talking to people in the newspaper trade that the Queen Mother's obituary was originally written ten years before she died, and that Bruce Forsyth's is fifteen years old. Amy Winehouse died on the Saturday, and her obituary was in Monday, so either the papers had her on the 'soon be dead' list or some people spent the whole of Sunday furiously typing away.
Today, via an online discussion that I stumbled across, I found out that Frank Dileo had died on August 24th, so his obituary has taken just over a month.
When the rules changed in 2007, which allowed downloaded songs to enter the charts, I wrote a few blogs and articles about how good this was for the music business. One of the points I made was that the days of the cigar chomping monsters in pin striped suits acting as managers were soon to be over.
Frank Dileo was one such cigar chomping monster in a pin striped suit. He first came to mainstream attention in the UK when he accompanied his client Michael Jackson on the Bad tour. This was the tour that Michael Jackson was also accompanied by a small boy called Jimmy Safechuck, so I imagine that Frank Dileo was discreet. Michael Jackson sacked him in 1989, which was brave considering that he must have known some stuff.
Dileo returned to work as Michael Jackson's manager, and he diligently turned up in court every day during the 2005 child molestation trial. He was also behind the comeback shows at the O2 Arena, which were scheduled to take place in 2009, despite his health not being up to it, in order to alleviate his debts.
He claimed in January this year that he intended to write his autobiography, saying "There's so much misinformation out there that I'm going to set the record straight once and for all".
That would have been some book, no wonder he had to die.
