With all the people becoming instantly famous for dying, you could be forgiven for thinking that kicking the bucket is the next rock and roll. Newspaper headlines lately have been full of news of people dying: final Gallipoli veteran Alec Campbell, oldest Aussie Jack Lockett and euthenesia campaigner Nancy Crick to name but a few. What makes their deaths worthy of media attention is not their lives neccessarily, just their deaths. No doubt these people lived amazing lives - but their passing would have recieved no media attention if they'd died naturally years ago. Perhaps we've found a new type of media celebrity: people only famous in death.

Ask any Aussie ten years ago who Alec Campbell was and their reply would probably ask about a soup company. Not now however. The death of our last Gallipoli veteran may be the end of an era in Australian history, but Mr Campbell remained adamant up to his death that he didn't deserve all the attention.

His short length of service during World War One is evidence of that. But, at age 103, whether he liked it or not, he became the final sole embodiment of the Anzac tradition, and on his death, his face ended up the front page of every newspaper in the country. Not because he lived a particularly heroic life compared to many others (well he did sail in the Sydney to Hobart yacht race six times more than most of us), but simply because he, much like an Ever-ready battery, ended up going and going. His fame wasn't even because of his death, but simply its timing: last in a long line of heroic diggers. Indeed it can be argued, the most heroic ones died first, on the battlefield and in the field hospitals. So why aren't they on the front page instead of this long-lasting, persistent everyman?

The same can be said of Australia's oldest man and oldest war veteran Jack Lockett, who died last Saturday aged 111. It's all about the timing, as if he had have died ten years earlier, he certainly wouldn't be getting a tax payer funded state funeral.

Someone who certainly isn't going to get a state funeral is Nancy Crick. The euthanasia campaigner committed suicide in front of family and friends last week aged 69, causing headlines around the world. Since then, a post-mortem has revealed that she, much like Gene Hackman's character from The Royal Tenenbaums, didn't actually have cancer. Her son Wayne Crick launched to her defence telling the press: "if the reports are correct and my mother is found not to have cancer, she was not aware of that." But what if she was aware? Did the housewife simply commit suicide for the media attention?

I'm not suggesting Ms Crick was feigning her illness - the postmortem did reveal that she had an inoperable twisted bowel leaving her in chronic pain, but there was no cancer present.

Despite this, her somewhat tragic death, caused by self-administering a tasty but deadly narcotic drink, might actually help other "right to die" campaigners after all. Brisbane police are yet to arrest those present at her suicide as the law requires, so perhaps we should go north and start stealing cars, because it appears as though an age of lawlessness has dawned in the Sunshine State. Of course, I'm joking, but death is no joke.

So what is it about death that people aspire to? Well, to quote John Popper of alternative 90's rock band Blues Traveler, "it takes the guiltiest of eyes to condemn the man who dies." It's just plain not nice to criticise the dead.

That's the reason why we haven't heard anything negative about Lockett, Campbell or Crick in the media since their passing. We aim to leave them in peace, remembering the good and forgetting about the bad. Even fugitive thief Christopher Skase was left relatively unscathed by the media following his death last year.

There are exceptions however. Simpsons creator Matt Groening was widely chastised for calling Richard Nixon an "evil" man in an editorial obituary following the US presidents death. However, he remains unapologetic to this day, citing Nixon's various foreign policy blunders, and not to mention, the famous Watergate affair. Groening's outburst was a rare one, as most people in the media generally adhere to respecting the dead.

Finally, although death has brought instant fame to the people listed above, at least they are remembered for what they did with their lives. Not like the winners of The Darwin Awards, an annual internet competition recognising individuals who contribute to the health of the gene pool by killing themselves in an amusing fashion. The funniest ones involve airplanes, pants, gas leaks, cross dressing and/or using Tamagotchi key rings while driving, but those anecdotes belong in a whole different column, if you know what I mean.