Even in death, John did things his way

AS in life, in death John McCarthy did things in his own inimitable style.

The human rights campaigner, who died earlier this week after a two-year battle with motor neurone disease, broke with tradition by not removing to a church for a religious ceremony, but instead holding a humanist service at the funeral home.

Although not religious, John, 61, did believe in some greater power, and liked the idea that we might one day dissolve back into the chemical elements of the universe and, at some stage, explode back into some other life form.