When I was thirteen I lost God. Miss Mary F B Neilson, M.A. (Glasgow), principal of the Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Melbourne, Australia, told us during daily prayers: “Ladies, keep your heads down and your legs together. On the left of the college is a brewery – good Christian ladies never drink beer – and on our right is Christian Brothers’ College for boys of the Roman Catholic faith, to whom I forbid you to speak.”

I learnt to cheat in Miss Neilson’s Bible class. Three times a year we were set long passages to memorise and regurgitate at exam time.

My bosom friends Eva and Jan, and I (a Victorian, Miss Neilson lived in denial of bosoms) each memorised a third of the rampant, impossible-to-get-a-grip-on plagues of biblical admonishments and diabolical threats. By stealthily copying from each other’s memory banks we each got an A+ mark, in recognition of our supposedly God-given, word-perfect memories.

Losing my virginity was slower than losing my faith. My Chinese mother’s daily warnings curbed my faith in men for two decades: “If you give it to Him (her voice raised to mark the capital ‘H’) before you go to the altar, He (raised voice again) won’t marry you.” That’s more Taoist than Christian, but she was definitely Maoist when she died in the closing stages of her hero’s Cultural Revolution. Mao, Mozart and Mendelssohn were early influences. Confucius and Paul Tortelier were next. Confucius for his Analect – “Choose work which you love and you won’t have to work another day.” ?

For Tortelier, the great French cellist, and me it was a synthesis of mind and soul; he showed me the way to a good life and a good death through Humanism. We agreed that we have only one life, and it is here on our planet Earth so it’s up to us to live it fully, help others find happiness and fulfillment, and do our best to make the world a better place.

I worked as a producer of talks in the BBC World Service. Then UNESCO in Paris invited me to produce educational radio and television programmes for their member states.

After working for some of the world’s poorest and most dispossessed people, I moved to the Parisian world of haute couture to become a press attaché, and at a stroke abruptly subordinated idealistic Humanism to fashion and beauty. This ended in tears, for the Paris fashion world is dedicated to a lifetime’s pursuit of ageless physical beauty.

Opportunities to invoke and share my Humanist ideas came with commissions to write four books, which have been translated into 14 languages. Two are about reading faces and body language as an aid to understanding human behaviour; Love Around the World is a panorama of love and sexual practices; and Mouse Tales, a factual but funny book about mice, had its origins in my first married name: Madame Souris, which is French for Mrs Mouse.

Now, I am writing a play about death and dying, with Michael Irwin, a former medical director of the United Nations, known for his worldwide Humanist work and for everyone’s right to die with dignity.

But best in my long and varied career is my work with the BHA as a Humanist celebrant of weddings and civil partnerships, baby namings, and funeral and memorial ceremonies.

The wedding ceremonies I have conducted range from very private and intimate family affairs to grand productions with ten bridesmaids and as many groomsmen, and the cosmopolitan customs of many countries woven into the ceremonies.

In all the funeral ceremonies I lead I try to get the mourners to laugh at least once. I see that as a sign of their coming to terms with their loss, and I will say we all have to live with the knowledge that everybody must die.

We Chinese choose to talk about death as a natural event; our big taboo might be sex – not doing it, but talking about it.

Death and the act of dying are certainly ‘Number One Taboo’ in the ‘Western’ world, and for the deeply religious of all faiths, everywhere.

The funerals I find hardest to do are those where the family cannot admit their loved one committed suicide, or died from drug addiction or alcohol abuse.

Some ceremonies though, are amazingly life-affirming, as when some music I had been asked to play stimulated the deceased’s friends to shout – “Chelsea!” – the football club they all supported and whose anthem was the music they had chosen. Or, a friend’s funeral, which I attended at the City of London Crematorium, for the 83 year old woman who demanded her funeral director provide four, well-built, male strippers to dance around her coffin – which I am glad to say they did with quite indecent gusto. And as she wanted us to do, we laughed!

Lailan Young is one of the celebrants in the BHA’s Humanist Ceremonies network. She is now based in central London. Born to Chinese parents, brought up in Melbourne, Australia, employed by the BBC World Service and UNESCO, she is a truly cosmopolitan Humanist. In her life’s rich tapestry, her work as a celebrant is one of the most colourful threads.