Broadcasting legend Sir Jimmy Savile – who is due to be laid to rest tomorrow after a three-day funeral – has finally fixed it for a Bradford undertaker.

Funeral director Robert Morphet, who is organising the funeral, said he wrote to Sir Jimmy’s Jim’ll Fix It TV programme as a youngster asking if he could be a funeral director.

Mr Morphet, of Joseph A Hey & Son Ltd, based in Great Horton Road, said he had never before been asked to organise a three-day funeral and staff had been working up to 14-hour days to accommodate the 84-year-old broadcaster’s wishes.

His gold-coloured coffin was displayed to the public at a hotel yesterday in his home city of Leeds, surrounded by items including pictures, his two This Is Your Life books and the last cigar he smoked. His closed coffin featured a crucifix and was covered with white roses.

Today, Sir Jimmy’s funeral cortege was visiting his mother’s house and the Leeds General Infirmary before arriving at the Roman Catholic St Anne’s Cathedral for a Requiem Mass.

The coffin will tomorrow tour Scarborough, where he had a flat, to give people there the chance to pay their respects before Sir Jimmy is laid to rest at an angle in the most elevated plot in the town’s Woodlands Cemetery.

  • For the full story, see Wednesday's Telegraph & Argus