This is yet another thing I thought Pratchett had made up but turned out to be totally real.
Unrelated but any time someone mentions clown makeup I'm reminded of how highly successful stage magician Penn Jillette almost flunked out of clown college and had to take remedial clown makeup classes.
My father was a magician and a clown. When he died, we cleared out his old clotehs and there was his clown suit.
"Oh I'll take this down to the charity shop" said my mother, missing hte part where no sane person is going to wear a clown suit.
"Nah" said I, "Have them dress him in it when they cremate him."
There was a pause and my throw-away joke started to slowly solidify into 'Yeah let's do that'.
A discussion was had with the mortician who had a bit of a worry that the costume would involve giant clown shoes which would prevent the coffin closing.
Luckily it wasn't that sort of outfit.
I told this to my dear friend who immediately envisaged someone trying to close a coffin onto a dead clown, only to have the big red nose go *Sad honk* every time there was an attempt to close the lid.
The awful hilarity rendered her incapable of standing.
The poor mortician can't figure out why it still won't close, and has to remove 5 dead clowns from the coffin before it finally shuts.
