Some just won't - or can't - go gently into that good night. Ros Paterson finds out why some people can't resist posthumous mischief-making.

It must be every man's dream. To go to ground with two blondes scrapping like she-cats over your affections. It happened to Kevin Lloyd - Tosh Lines in The Bill - who died recently. At the funeral, his missus triumphantly revealed that he longed for reunion while the woman with whom he had been living for two years, Rita Hudson, could only look on tearfully.

It happened to Frank Sinatra, who went to his grave to the strains of ''actually, he was the love of my life'' from anyone who'd been near him in the past 50 years. Men who crave the complicated existence could only bow down before such masters; the only drawback being that none of these masters was alive to enjoy it.

And what about the teacher from Crewe, Elmer Dutton, whose family gasped to discover that the dear departed's wordlies were not to go to them, not even to a donkey sanctuary, but to the female impersonation duo, Hinge and Bracket? Or Hughie Green, who revealed to the world, just as he was leaving it, that he, not Jess, was Paula Yates's Daddy? How do these people manage to so order their lives that upon their extinction all manner of hell breaks loose? And where is the pleasure in imagining their faces, if you, by that time, are going to be pushing up daisies?

Chaos, reckons psychologist Dr Geoff Scobie, is often the legacy of complex lives. Think of Sinatra, whose family now teeters on the brink of implosion. ''When old age or infirmity strikes, many find that they just don't have the time or energy to sort it all out before they die, so they don't even try.''

''Some people die to cause mischief,'' says Philip Hodson, agony uncle at Woman's Journal. ''Other people's suffering is their motive.''

Posthumous mischief-makers are, according to Hodson, ''desperate for attention all the time, and will not go gently into that good night under any circumstances''. Frank Sinatra being a classic example, he says, and also Wagner: ''Both were given to big gestures,'' - Sinatra's will contains a bequest of millions to help abused children - ''and sought attention, whether it was good or bad.''

Hence it would not, perhaps, have upset Ol' Blue Eyes to see that he left behind him a tangle of utterly fascinating contradictions: both a wife-batterer and a champion of abused kids; a sensitive friend and a loud-mouth who shot his mouth off about Jews. ''These people need a monument, just as Thatcher wanted hers to be the Channel Tunnel and Mitterrand wanted that awful opera house in Paris.''

Of course, some would argue that the reason many do not settle their affairs is because they cannot conceive of a world without them, quietly presuming themselves to be immune to death. ''It's like superstition with some people,'' says Hodson, ''They die denying death. For someone like Robert Maxwell, he couldn't possibly have tidied up all that mess, so he denied the fact that he would have to.''

If chaotic funerals are caused by ill-preparation, then the vindictive will-maker is a different creature altogether. In such cases, reckons Dr Scobie, the causes may be mercenary in the extreme. ''People who go in for this are usually not particularly nice anyway - they are manipulators, tricking people into caring for them by promising money in the will. And then whipping it away as a final act of spite.''

''She was a peevish and peculiar woman,'' says Hilda Done of her cousin, Elmer Dutton, though even she was surprised by the will. Patrick Fyffe, aka Dame Hilda Bracket, and Dutton's favourite, received #39,000, while his partner, Evadna Hinge, had to content him/herself with a mere #1000. ''The fact is, they didn't need the money,'' opines Done, ''The least she could have done was leave it to charity.'' Dr Scobie points out that choosing obscure, or undeserving, beneficiaries can be half the pleasure when drawing up a spiteful will, though Dutton's opting to leave her family and friends with nothing at all was, apparently, a small mercy. ''It's much crueller to leave a pittance, because you are further humiliated by accepting it.''

''I can see that it must provide sheer pleasure,'' says Clare Raynor. ''Getting everyone to dance to your tune because you've promised to leave them #10,000 in your will. People who don't make wills are missing out on a lot of fun.''

Dutton's husband already plans to have his ashes scattered across the steps of the Tate Gallery ''because he's never had a painting bought by the Tate, and plans to get

there somehow''. The law in Scotland does give families some protection against capriciousness. ''In England, you can cut people out of your will entirely,'' notes Tom Guthrie, of Glasgow University's law department, ''but here, if you want to ensure they get nothing, you have to spend it all before you die.''

As for posthumous revelations, there are two possibilities: the desire to set the record straight - or to set the cat among the pigeons. ''I think, as the end approaches, everyone has that urge to leave a footprint in the sand,'' muses Raynor.

says Dr Scobie: ''There are control freaks in life, who are never happy about giving up a chance to exert influence.'' Vindictive people won't miss out on the chance to do it posthumously, especially as this is the one occasion in your life when everyone, whether they like it or not, is forced to pay attention to you.

However, planning the will and the wake may be all very well, but no amount of outgoing fireworks is going to achieve what you really, really want it to. In the words of Woody Allen: ''I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.''