James Brown To Get His Bad Self Buried This Week

Christmas feels like it happened so long ago that all the memories are fading - the food has been eaten, the presents have been refunded, you hate your family again - all except for James Brown, who died on Christmas day and still isn't buried.

Thanks to good old fashioned wrangles over James Brown's estate and possessions, the singer has gone close to two months without being buried. But now the different feuding factions of James Brown's family have finally reached a compromise, and James Brown's body is all set to be buried in a confidential ceremony within the next few days. Yes, this is basically the Anna Nicole Smith story, only about someone who was actually talented that didn't paint his face like a scary clown on a whim every now and again.

Anna Nicole Smith doesn't have the monopoly on unburied celebrities, you know. Before her there was James Brown, and his story is no less complicated - even with his conspicuous lack of giant wobbly breasts. As the self-proclaimed hardest working man in showbusiness, James Brown's death by heart failure and pneumonia took the world by surprise on Christmas day last year - and not even being kissed on the lips by Michael Jackson on a stage in a theatre in front of a crowd shortly afterwards would prove to be the strangest thing that happened to James Brown's cadaver.

That came when it was revealed that James Brown's body was still unburied three weeks after his death thanks to family arguments about his place of burial and his estate, among other things. Add to that the problems caused by Tomi Rae Hynie, who married James Brown while she was still married to somebody else and gave birth to his child before he had chance to update his will properly, and it looked like James Brown would never get buried.

But now it seems that he will. James Brown's six remaining children, various grandchildren and Tomi Rae Hynie have all made peace with each other enough to bury James Brown in the very near future, although they're buggered if they're going to tell you where it is, as Channel Four reports:

The late soul singer's children and former partner Tomi Rae Hynie Brown have decided to bury the star in a confidential location nearly two months after he died… Attorney Robert Rosen said: "The children and the wife, my client Tomi Rae Brown, have come to an agreement and they have decided that he will be buried in a decent place but it's going to be kept confidential. Assuming a court order is signed he could be buried in the next few days."

Has James Brown's burial site been kept confidential to finally allow his quarrelling family a chance to finally grieve their loss? Possibly, although it's more likely to be because James Brown is being buried in a massive gold casket, and he'd probably get dug up by shovel-wielding bandits within a couple of days. Still, whatever the reason for the burial, it's reassuring to know that James Brown is finally going to be put to rest - even more so now that all the different members of his family can stand united in his memory.

Well, all except for Tomi Rae Hynie - she's suing everyone else because she wants half of James Brown's stuff. That's the spirit.

Read more:

James Brown Burial Decided - Channel 4