You were asked to speak because you were the funniest, and now you are afraid of getting the tone wrong.

Somebody chose you for a reason. Either you were the funniest, or you knew him longest. Both briefs are real and they are not the same job, so decide tonight which one you are doing. If you were chosen for the years, the room wants continuity. If you were chosen for the jokes, the room wants him alive in front of them for four minutes, and laughter is the only tool that does that fast.

What a friend can say that family cannot

This is the part nobody explains, and it is the whole reason you were asked instead of his brother. If you knew him from work rather than outside it, a eulogy for a colleague is a different job with different rules.

• who he was when nobody was managing himFamily got the son, the husband, the father. You got the man at 2am in a car park, the man on the fifth pint deciding to drive to the coast, the man at work. His mother has never once heard what he was like at 24. You are the only person in the building who can give her that, and she wants it more than she wants comfort.
• the ridiculousA widow cannot stand up and say her husband was banned from a garden centre. You can. Friendship is the relationship licensed to find someone absurd and love them anyway, and that permission is exactly what a funeral is short of.
• the friendship itself, said out loudMen in particular almost never say what a friend was to them. Say it once, plainly, without decoration. “He was my best friend for 31 years” is a sentence a lot of people in that room needed someone to say.
• what you cannot doYou do not get to speak for the family, characterise his marriage, referee anything between his children, or say anything about the last months that his wife has not said first. Less standing is real. Stay inside the friendship and you cannot go wrong.

The test is not whether it is funny. It is who the laugh is about.

How funny is allowed

Funnier than you think. A funeral is ninety people holding their faces still for an hour, and the first honest laugh is a release valve — you can feel the room drop an inch. Two or three laughs in four minutes is right. Stand-up is not.

Here is the actual test, and it works on every line you are unsure about. Does this make him more present in the room, or does it make me the performer? A story where he is the one doing something impossible is the first kind. A joke you wrote tonight, that he has nothing to do with, that you are looking up for a reaction on, is the second kind. Cut the second kind every time, even when it is the better joke.

Dave was the only man I have ever known to be asked to leave a garden centre. He maintained until the day he died that he was in the right, and he had a printed email to prove it.

he is the engine of the joke, not you — this is always safe

He gave terrible advice with total confidence for 30 years, and I took most of it, and I would take it again.

affectionate, true, and it lands as love rather than as a gag

The two jokes to cut

• the one only four of you understandThe nickname, the incident in Corfu, the callback to something from 2004. Four people laugh and eighty-six people sit there feeling shut out of a man they also loved. If it needs setup, it needs cutting. If you cannot bear to lose it, tell it at the reception, where the audience is the right one.
• the one that is really about someone still livingHis first marriage. His brother’s driving. The friend who is not here and everyone knows why. It will get the biggest laugh in the room and one person will carry it for a decade. A funeral has no exit; you do not get to make anyone in that room the joke.

Two more, briefly: nothing about the death itself, and nothing about the body or the coffin. There is no version of that which works, and you will not be able to tell from your kitchen table that it does not.

His parents, his wife, his children

They are in the front row and you are about to be funny in front of them. That is fine, and it will be fine, because you are going to do one thing first: you are going to hand him back to them before you start on the stories.

Margaret, John — you raised a genuinely good man, and he was funnier than either of you. Some of what I am about to say you have not heard. I promise you it is all true and none of it is a betrayal.

the sentence you owe them, said early, at normal volume, then move on

Ellie, Tom — I have known your dad longer than you have. When you are older and you want to know what he was like before you arrived, I am the person to ask, and I will not be going anywhere.

for his children, if he had them; say it to them, not about them

Do not look at them while you are being funny. Pick someone in the third row who is not family and say the funny parts to him. Come back to the front row for the last line only.

The years you were not there for

You lost touch for six years, or you only ever knew him at work, or the last time you spoke properly was before his kids were born. Everyone in this position tries to paper over it and the papering is audible. Do the opposite: say what you had, and be specific about its edges.

I did not see much of him for about eight years. I am not going to pretend I know what those years were like. What I can tell you is that when I rang him in March, he answered as though we had spoken on Tuesday, and he asked about my mother by name.

a gap named once becomes honest ground instead of a hole in the speech

Then fill the gap with other people rather than with guesses. Text three of his friends and his sister tonight: one line, one memory, whatever comes first. Quote them by name at the lectern. “His sister told me this week that…” is a strong sentence, and it does something you cannot do alone — it puts a whole life in the room, not just your section of it.

End on him. Something he said, quoted and then left alone. His voice is the last thing the room should hear, and you are the person who still has it.

• How do I write a eulogy for a friend?

  Work out whether you were asked because you were the funniest or because you knew him longest, then do that job. Give the room the man his family never saw: him at work, him at 2am, him being absurd. Say once, plainly, what the friendship was. Stay inside the friendship and do not characterise his marriage, his children or his last months.

• What do you say in a eulogy for a best friend?

  Say the thing almost nobody says out loud: that he was your best friend, for however many years, in one undecorated sentence. Then tell two stories, each with a place, an action and something he actually said. Address his parents or his wife early, once, to hand him back to them before the funny parts. End on his own words rather than on yours.

• Can a eulogy be funny?

  Yes, and for a friend it usually should be. A funeral is ninety people holding their faces still for an hour, and the first honest laugh lets the whole room drop an inch. Two or three laughs in four minutes is about right; stand-up is not. The laughs must come from things he actually did, not from lines you wrote tonight to get a reaction.

• How funny is too funny at a funeral?

  Use one test on every line you are unsure about: does it make him more present in the room, or does it make you the performer? Cut anything that is really about you. Cut the in-joke only four people understand, because the other eighty-six feel shut out. Cut anything that makes a living person in that room the punchline, and cut every joke touching the death, the body or the coffin. Everything else is allowed.