Somebody's Darling

William Rigney was a New Zealander who found himself in the position of having to bury an unidentified body.

In the Otago gold rush days, young men came from all over the world with nothing more than the shirt on their backs, dreaming of the fortune they might make. One day in 1864, goldminer William Rigney found the drowned and unidentifiable body of a young man. Rigney decided to give the man a decent burial, and over the grave placed a wooden headboard. Not knowing what to write, Rigney said to himself, "well, whoever he was, he was somebody's darling.' So he inscribed the words 'Somebody's Darling Lies Buried Here.' For years afterwards, Rigney tended the grave, and when he died 48 years later, he was, at his own request, laid to rest beside the man he never knew. Rigney's own gravestone reads 'William Rigney. The Man who buried Somebody's Darling.' The graves stand to this day, at Millers Flat.

This story comes courtesy of Billy Connolly, who was on our screens this evening doing one of his wonderful world tours. I love the way Connolly takes no prisoners: he can in the same breath mercilessly take the rip out of places, and treat them with affectionate respect. He sees the inconsitencies, sees right through the smokescreens and pretences, but (maybe because he's pretty much reconciled to his own humanity) doesn't take it over-seriously and always identifies the beating human heart beneath it. Despite the irreverence, or even because of it, his style has a kind of redemptive quality.

He did a whole series on Oz a few years back, which was a brilliant alternative view of the great Down Under. His quirky tour of Middle Earth is absolutely up to his usual standard.