Over Christmas my father announced that he only really got the newspaper to see which of his friends had died that day. “There comes a stage when you move naturally from weddings to obituaries” he intoned and looked longingly at his mother-in-law. This shocked me not only because I had not yet finished my Bran Flakes, but because I’m already an avid obituary reader. In fact, obituaries are about the only thing that is getting me through the crippling self-doubt and depression associated with trying - and failing - to get gainful employment after university.

There will be many of you reading this who will soon face similar worries. Be in no doubt that you are some of the lucky ones: at least you’ll have a degree from a good university. But many of you will have spent so much of your education keeping every possible door open that actually facing up manfully to a decision which will shut some may prove much harder than you imagine. Of course there are doctors and actors and those sinister people who have wanted to be an MP from a very tender age; but the vast majority of today’s graduates, particularly those that have studied useless arts degrees, will have absolutely no idea what to do when your student discount ends. The choices open to you, superficially so overwhelming, will inevitably contract alarmingly on closer inspection. And you will be left with the classic three way punt: lawyer, accountant or graduate trainee in a capitalist behemoth.

But there is another way. To find it just cast open your nearest newspaper and run your eye over the obituaries. Fifteen minutes in the company of these lives, invariably lived to the full with equal dollops of tragedy and euphoria, reminds us that those adolescent dreams of doing something truly fascinating are possible. Here for once is concrete evidence that people have pursued multiple careers in one life, that your parents are not always right, and that there are some private lives being lived out across the globe which are quite frankly astonishing.

Those are my favourites – the obituaries about people you have simply never heard of but that you soon wish you had met. Men like Richard Sonnenfeldt, the Jewish émigré from Nazi Germany. Having attended a British boarding school he was sent to Australia as an enemy alien at the outbreak of war from where he made his way to America via Asia. Having completed his high school education, he enrolled in the US army and helped liberate Dachau. Later while he was polishing tyres in a motor yard, General ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan took him to the Nuremberg trials as his personal interpreter. There Sonnenfeldt played a pivotal role for the chief prosecutor grilling Nazi’s. On one occasion, he told Goering to shut up as he patiently transcribed his testimony about the Holocaust. Duties completed, he returned to Johns Hopkins University, passing out top of his year in electrical engineering. A key role in the eventual invention of colour television, some small involvement in the moon landings, and three yachting trips across the Atlantic were all to follow. Asked before his death what he thought of the Nazi’s his main thought was that “they might have easily have been taken for a group of very ordinary men, picked at random from a crowd.”

I doubt if Sonnenfeldt ever met Charles Conrad during his brief time with NASA but they would probably have got on. Conrad was the third man to land on the moon, but unlike many of his contemporaries it never really went to his head. He had made fun of the psychological tests the first time he applied for the post. Asked to provide a stool sample in one, he delivered it in a cake box with a bow. When he did eventually step on the moon (one of twelve people in history so to do), the diminutive Conrad’s words -“Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that’s a long one for me” - were supposedly uttered to win a bet he had made that you could say anything on TV. He would not have even made it had he not disregarded orders at lift off to abort after the shuttle was struck by lightning. Before he died tragically in a motorcycle accident he was asked about the existence of aliens. He thought they probably existed. “After all, there’s plenty of unearthly looking things moving around in my refrigerator” he quipped.

Conrad was probably not rich enough to meet Pamela Harriman, but she would have charmed him as she did almost every man she ever met. Born into a stultifying middle-class rural life, the young Pamela ran away to London in search of adventure. At one party she met and danced with Randolph Churchill (Winston’s son), who proposed within hours. The marriage was not a success but aged 20 Pamela became one of her father-in-law’s closest confidants, nursing him through his darkest hours as he sought to run the war-torn country. That was not her only duty. Under Churchill’s auspices and with Randolph abroad, she started an affair with the US envoy in London, Averell Harriman. In doing so she helped iron out some of the biggest political misunderstandings in the early war. Other affairs followed (with Ed Murrow, the veteran broadcaster and allegedly even with Sinatra).

But with peace came divorce from Randolph and an enforced change of scene. She spent some time in Paris – simultaneously the mistress of Baron de Rothschild and Gianni Agnelli, heir to the Fiat fortune. After being tragically jilted, Pamela relocated and reinvented herself once more, marrying first a Broadway musical director and then her former lover Averell Harriman in the US. By then Averell was the elder statement of the Democratic Party and after his death Pamela inherited his role. She introduced Al Gore to Clinton and helped fund and promote the latter’s run for president. On the day Bill arrived in the Oval office his first act was to ring Pamela. “Is there anything I can do for you Pamela” he asked. “Yes. I want to be US ambassador in Paris”. So it was. When she died in 1997 after four years in office (shortly after swimming in the Ritz as she did every day before work), Chirac awarded her the Legion D’honneur. Not to be upstaged, Clinton sent Air Force 1 to pick up her body - the only time it had happened for a civilian. At her funeral 3 heads of state were in attendance. One woman: friend, confidant and advisor to everyone from Churchill to Clinton.

_{The real Indiana Jones}

And for the adventurous among you it is hard to look beyond Gene Savoy. After a failed marriage in Portland, Oregon and having read Hiram Bingham’s classic account of the discovery of Machu Picchu, Savoy set off to Peru. He founded the Andean Explorers Club - membership: one (himself) and married a rich Peruvian. In 1964 he correctly identified Old Vilcambamba, the last city of the Inca’s and as a result was dubbed the “real Indian Jones” by Forbes Magazine. Other discoveries followed until his return to the US. He settled in Reno, Nevada, which still celebrates Gene Savoy day. There he was able to form his own church (populated mainly with adoring women followers) and in his 50s spent much of his time aboard 60 foot rafts built to ancient Andean design in order to prove the existence of a once great global civilization following in Heydrahl’s footsteps. He died happily in 2007.

So if the prospect of gainful employment worries you enormously and you are receiving emails from graduate recruitment bureaus stuffed full of unappetising opportunities, look to the obituaries. And if you have already signed yourself away then perhaps you will be able to catch a precious few seconds in the company of these extraordinary lives during your lunch break. That is assuming your company allows you to visits websites other than Bloomberg. In any case, the magic lives of odd people, of which this is a just a small and badly summarised selection, remind us that chances are there to be taken. If you are very lucky when your time is up, you might just have merited one yourself.