AT this time of year, with its faded good cheer, it behoves me to talk about death. Well, somebody has to do it.

The assertion that nobody is talking about death is widely talked about. But it’s like the politician’s answer, “We need to have a discussion about this”, while never actually discussing this.

True, somebody has been talking about death this week, in the Royal Institution’s Christmas Lectures on yon BBC. But, even then, the focus has been on forensics when we want to know about pain, panic and the afterlife.

All of us without exception deplore the reported deaths of famous people which never tell us the two things we want to know: was it painless and how did they face it? Bravely, of course, comes up a lot but it’s mostly a meaningless trope like “battled cancer”.

One of many dozens of deaths this year was that of Raymond Briggs, creator of the massively popular Snowman animated cartoon, viewed on TV worldwide at Christmas, a time that the artist himself deplored.

Robert McNeil: City folks walk more than country cousins. The latter take car everywhere

Briggs explained of his creation (spoiler alert, children!): “The Snowman melts, my parents died, animals die, flowers die. Everything does. There’s nothing particularly gloomy about it. It’s a fact of life.”

It’s also a fact of fiction. Death is the underlying theme of The Lord of the Rings, my bible, and it makes me laugh when learned literary experts say it’s just a lot of tripe about elves and dwarves. Well, fair enough, it is. But it’s important tripe.

Of all life’s events, death is the most important, apart from birth, marriage, parenthood and Hibs winning the cup.

Yon Baroness Black of Strome, the Inverness-born forensics expert giving this week’s lectures (whose colleagues must surely call her The Black Death), pointed out sagely that death is undiscussed because, these days, we don’t experience it till midlife, whereas in the not too distant past our siblings and parents were dropping like flies before we’d reached adolescence.

After a bit, though, even nowadays, parents, siblings, pets, friends and favourite pop stars will pop off at such a rate that you wonder if anyone’s left. It gets discombobulating. You think: "There’s something not quite right here." And there ain’t.

It’s just another farcical aspect of life on Earth, which is predicated from the start on death: everything eating everything else. What a way to run a railroad. Were I a deity, as well as designing myself with bigger muscles and a smaller nose, I’d have organised life on less cruel grounds, though I cannot think of anything at the time of going to press.

What I can reveal exclusively is that, recently, on thinking I was about to die, I went about my business calmly, leaving a note saying where folk could find my will on my computer. I just thought: "Thank God, that farce is over."

Turns out it was just a bunion. But you have to be prepared. Also, when I say “went about my business calmly”, I report for balance a brief episode when I fell to my knees weeping and wailing, “Why me? I’m so young!” A bit embarrassing at the podiatrist’s clinic.

As for the will, it’s just some rough notes, indicating that I leave to X all manuscripts of my early attempts at poetry, to Y half of my collection of dry roasted peanut packets, and to Z the other half, the unironed ones.

Robert McNeil: I’m not a shopaholic but what has happened to capitalism?

If the bunion had killed me, I’d have died without doing the one thing on my bucket list: the Hurtigruten maritime trip up, and also doon, the west coast of Norway.

The beauty of the Hurtigruten is you don’t have to get off the ship, a great boon as I’ve no desire to stand on foreign soil or encounter any Norwegians. I’ve met some before. Deplorable manners.

The Hurtigruten used to be niche, travelling cheaply on cargo boats calling in at coastal communities. Now it’s commercialised on cruise ships, where the price starts at £500 but in practice turns out to be £2,500 if you want somewhere to sleep, rising to £3,500 if travelling on your own, for which you must be punished.

So, doubtless, I’ll shuffle off this mortal coil before I kick the bucket list. Enough of such talk! Enough of folk talking about how we never talk about death! Death: it’s a pain in the neck and other regions.

Just as political discussion should be left to properly qualified journalists, talk of death should be restricted to morticians, clergymen, forensics experts, the Snowman and JRR Tolkien.