It's time to write the wrongs of your obituary

Today I am bringing you an entire novel. Not just a novel, but an interactive novel. That means that at various points in the story you, the reader, will be offered a set of four options, and you have to choose the right one in order to carry on.

To make it easier, you are the hero of the novel, which is called The Final Deadline. Your name is Forsyth Lander, you are a multi-millionaire and you think that money can buy everything. That is because in the past you have managed to get everything you ever wanted – a big house, another big house, a small wife and a lot of big cars – simply by paying for it. Well, you didn't actually buy your wife. Well, yes, you did actually, if giving your wife a lot of money qualifies as buying her.

But as you grow older, you get obsessed with the one thing that money probably can't buy, which is:

a) a guaranteed place in heaven;

b) an audience with the Pope;

c) seeing Tim Henman win Wimbledon;

d) having an advance look at your obituary.

Yes, it may sound petty, but you would dearly love to know what was going to be said about you after your death. You are friends with two or three newspaper editors, and you drop hints occasionally that you would be very generous to anyone who let them have a quick shufti at the obituary notice, which you are sure is already in stock, awaiting your demise. Oddly enough, all these editors all say the same thing: they invite you to get stuffed.

The position seems pretty hopeless, but because you believe that money can buy everything, you hire a private detective to get on the case. The detective, name of Wilson, has a snoop round a top newspaper office and quickly realises that the only way to get a look at an obituary is to bribe someone on the inside. So he gets hold of the deputy features editor, an unassuming woman called Belinda Snowball, and offers her £50,000 to:

a) run an article saying what a good egg Jeffrey Archer really is;

b) run an article tipping the shares of a certain company;

c) buy the exclusive rights to Charles Kennedy's memoirs;

d) serialise a new novel by Tony Blackburn.

"A novel by Tony Blackburn!" exclaims Ms Snowball. "Impossible! The paper would lose all credibility and I would lose my job!"

"All right," says Wilson. "Just get me a copy of Forsyth Lander's obit instead."

For £50,000 this seems not unreasonable, so la Snowball asks the obit dept to let her have a copy of several stock obituaries, including Lander's, and they, unsuspecting, oblige. She gives it to Wilson, and he brings it to you.

"Well done, Wilson !" you say. But that is before you read the obituary, which says, in so many words, that you were:

a) a crook;

b) a fraud;

c) a monster;

d) a man so dreary that not even a fortune could make him interesting.

"Boring!" you exclaim. "They thought I was boring! Or rather, they think I am boring. Oh, my God, Wilson, they can't print this."

"Nor will they, sir," says Wilson, "as long as you never die."

The wit of this is lost on you as you sit there brooding. Suddenly your course of action becomes clear. You must so engineer it that a new obituary is substituted for the old one, without the paper knowing. If Wilson can steal the obit, surely he can put a new one in?

You put the idea to Wilson. He shrugs and says he will have a go. Several weeks later he rings up and says he has managed by devious means, involving Ms Snowball, to delete the offending obit from the newspaper's database, and they are now awaiting a new one to insert.

"Leave it to me," you say, and you are just about to commence writing your own, much more favourable, obituary when something terrible happens:

a) you lose your memory;

b) you look deep into your soul and realise that you really are boring;

c) your accountant rings up and says you have lost all your money;

d) your wife, driven mad by living with you, bursts into your room with a loaded gun, determined to kill you.

Yes, the wife you bought so many years ago is about to shoot you, at the very time when there is NO obituary to print at your death. If only she could have shot you next week, you think. There's only one thing to do and that is...

Oops! I'm sorry. We have run out of space. You are on your own now. Good luck!