Alexander Chancellor: The report of my death is an exaggeration

Alexander Chancellor, approaching his 70th birthday, has made it known that he is not yet dead.

Chancellor, former correspondent and editor, wrote in his weekly column in The Guardian today that the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia “claims that I passed away on 10 December. I'm happy to put the record straight”.

“I can stop fretting about the imminence of my 70th birthday, for Wikipedia tells me that I am dead. It says that I have died very recently - only a week ago, in fact - and I would be interested to know what it thinks happened to me on 10 December, the supposed day of my death. As far as I recall, I did nothing at all that day except sit by the fire and write a column for G2, later rewarding myself with a large drink and an early bed. I have pinched myself again today, so I can state, as Mark Twain once did, that the report of my death is an exaggeration.”

It was a reader who drew The Guardian's attention to his recently updated Wikipedia entry, which begins "Alexander Chancellor (January 4, 1940 - December 10, 2009) was a British journalist".

“Noting that the Guardian hadn't thought it worth commenting on my demise and that it had also published a column by me on the day after my death, the reader wondered whether someone had been ‘erroneously or maliciously editing the Wikipedia entry’. Good question. I wonder, too,” Chancellor wrote.

“Malice is the more appealing explanation, for it would be fun to try to guess who was responsible and why. But error is the more likely one. The examples of premature obituaries or death notices in the media are legion, but are nearly always the result of some muddle over a name or misunderstood report. Sometimes they can have a salutary effect, as when Alfred Nobel, inventor of dynamite, reading in his own obituary that he was a merchant of death, decided to make amends by setting up the Nobel prizes.

“But I have merited no obituary so will just go on being a journalist for a while, though perhaps being a little more cautious about putting my faith in Wikipedia from now on. Anyone can edit it, and even as I have been writing this, someone has kindly brought me back to life.”

Chancellor was economic affairs editor when he left Reuters in 1974. He edited The Spectator from 1975 to 1984 and edited the Talk of the Town section in The New Yorker from 1992 to 1993. His year among Manhattan socialites provided the material for a book, Some Times in America: and a life in a year at The New Yorker. He is the son of Sir Christopher Chancellor, general manager, who resigned in 1959 aged 55 and died in 1989. ■