It is a fair bet that the late Adam Faith never dreamed that he might one day be a contender for inclusion in the dictionary of famous last words. But his final utterance - "Channel 5 is all shit, isn't it? Christ, the crap they put on there. It's a waste of space" - is one to remember. It is immediately worthy to rank with the words of Pitt the Younger ("I think that I could eat one of Bellamy's meat pies") or with those of Bing Crosby ("That was a great game of golf, fellas"). Like Anton Chekhov ("It is never too late for a glass of champagne") and the late Roy Jenkins ("I would like two lightly poached eggs"), Mr Faith has added to his lustre by the poignancy of the words he uttered as the curtain fell for the final time.

Famous last words are rarely planned as such. Those that sound as if they have been carefully drafted ("So little done, so much to do" - Cecil Rhodes; "Woe is me; I think I am becoming a god" - Emperor Vespasian; "Oh, my country, how I leave my country" - Pitt the Younger, alternative version; "What an irreparable loss" - Auguste Comte) are rarely as poetic as those which are thrown up by fate and chance. The best are often those whose spontaneity is made specially memorable by what followed. These range from the shortly to be executed Ned Kelly ("Such is life") to the American civil war general who turned and pronounced "They couldn't hit an elephant from this distance" just as the sharpshooter's bullet hit him in the head. But the great ones also rise to the occasion. "Even in the valley of the shadow of death two and two do not make six" announced Tolstoy, spurning the hovering priest. Karl Marx exited in character too, berating an attendant who asked if he had any last words: "Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven't said enough." But Henrik Ibsen, whose legacy contains few jokes, did specially well; as his nurse assured a visitor that the playwright was a little better, Ibsen spluttered "On the contrary" - and died.