Bizarre funeral requests

In life celebrities enjoy the sort of gilded existence that's the envy of, well, just about everyone else on the planet. Yet some aren't happy to have their flamboyant lifestyles cut short by the small matter of death. Instead they strive to remain 'different' right to the very end - in all manner of different ways.

Jimmy Savile
Sir Jimmy planned every aspect of his recent funeral in minute detail and it is thanks to this that regulars at the Queen's Hotel, Leeds, got to sink a few pints beside the tracksuited DJ as he lay in state inside a gold coffin on the bar.

The radio star was then taken on a final tour of Leeds before being buried at a 45-degree angle at Woodlands Cemetery, so that he would always have a view of the coastline. Inside the coffin - which was later encased in concrete - were a Royal Marines medal, a green beret and a Help For Heroes wristband.

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Tupac
Gangster rapper Tupac Shakur died a gangster's death when he was murdered in a drive-by shooting on September 13, 1996. Yet his friends gave him an even more alarming send-off: they smoked his ashes.

A band member later revealed: "Yes, it's definitely true... We had hit the beach, threw in a lot of s**t he liked at the beach. Some weed, some chicken wings, he loved orange soda... Pac loved that kind of s**t, so we were giving him our own farewell... If you listen to Black Jesus, he said, "Last wishes... smoke my ashes." So they did!

Hunter S Thompson
Given the way he lived his life it was only natural that the wild man of American journalism should have plotted a fiendishly weird funeral - this is, after all, a man who hung out with Richard Nixon while high on acid.

Hunter didn't disappoint: his loyal friend Johnny Depp followed his funeral wishes to the letter and constructed a 150ft high canon shaped like a two-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button. At the end of the ceremony Hunter's ashes were blasted out of the cannon while his close friends saluted his life with an arsenal of fireworks and Kentucky bourbon.

Gene Roddenberry
Given that he single-handedly created Star Trek it's only fitting that some of the sci-fi legend's ashes were stowed on board the space shuttle Columbia in 1992 and sent spinning around the Earth's orbit 160 times.

Gene's posthumous space wanderings didn't stop there either: he and fellow Star Trek legend James Doohan (Scotty) were launched into space on board a Pegasus rocket in 1997 - although, sadly, it failed to go into orbit and fell back to Earth. Never one to give up, however, Gene's ashes will be given a second chance to make orbit in 2012 when they're launched into space alongside those of his wife Majel.

Kurt Cobain
It took four years for Kurt's ashes to be scattered after his death in April 1994. They were also split up so that he could rest in a remote part of Washington State named McLane Creek, the ground beneath a willow tree outside 171 Lake Washington Boulevard, Seattle, and inside a Buddhist memorial sculpture.

In 2008 Kurt's widow Courtney Love also claimed she had kept some of his ashes in a "pink teddy bear-shaped bag along with a lock of his hair" and that they were stolen in a burglary. Australian conceptual artist Natascha Stellmach later claimed she had 'obtained' the misappropriated remains and was going to smoke them in a joint to "set him free". Madness.

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Liberace
From the 1950s to the early 1980s, flamboyant piano player Liberace was the most garish, eccentric and over-the-top entertainer on the planet. He was also the best paid and his stage wardrobe alone was estimated at over £1 million. It was not unusual to see him drive onto stage in a Rolls Royce and play on a rhinestone-covered piano beside a jewel-studded candelabra.

Fittingly, Liberace carried this into death too: the super-showman was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery, Hollywood Hills, on February 7 1987 in a gold coffin, wearing his wig, a white tuxedo and full makeup. His casket also included a photo of his last boyfriend and his favourite dog.

Freddie Mercury
When the Queen vocalist died of Aids in November 1991, he left his royalties and palatial Georgian mansion to ex-girlfriend Mary Austin. In return Mary had to dispose of his ashes in secret and to this day she is the only person on Earth to know the whereabouts of Freddie's final resting place.

"I had to do it alone," she later revealed. "I found it all a bit spooky. They were in a plastic bag inside the urn. Afterwards I had to put everything back and bolt it together. I suddenly thought, 'I think you've left just a bit too much for me to do, Freddie'." Quite.

Sid Vicious
In life Sid was the chaotic poster boy for punk. His demise was suitably anarchic: on Feb 1, 1979 Sid was released on $50,000 bail, pending his trial for the murder of ex-girlfriend Nancy Spungen. To celebrate his freedom, Sid threw a massive party but was found dead from a heroin overdose the next morning while his new girlfriend was sleeping beside him.

Sid's body was then cremated and his mother planned to sprinkle the ashes over Nancy's grave in a gesture of truly loving significance. However, tragically, she accidentally dropped her son's ashes on the tarmac at Heathrow instead.

Gram Parsons
Country music star Gram Parsons is best known for his work with 60s hippy rockers the Byrds. Yet his funeral was no love fest as, shortly after his morphine overdose in 1973, Gram's stepfather scheduled a private burial in New Orleans - expressly against Gram's wish to be buried in Joshua Tree, California.

A pair of Gram's enraged friends then stole his casket from Los Angeles International Airport, drove to Joshua Tree, poured five gallons of petrol inside the coffin and set it alight. Local police alerted by the enormous fireball immediately chased the pair into the desert yet, amazingly, they managed to drunkenly escape.

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Michael Jackson
The King of Pop's funeral at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park was a fairly low-key affair, attended by 200 close friends and family. The final resting place of his gold coffin is also a closely guarded secret.

Yet Michael's memorial service was on a totally different scale, taking place in front of 20,000 'mourners' at the Staples Centre in LA, some of whom had gained tickets through a lottery and others who had paid up to $10,000 a head. Throughout the ceremony Michael's glimmering gold casket stood at the front of the stage while the likes of Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, Usher, Lionel Ritchie and, ahem, Shaheen Jafargholi from Britain's Got Talent, belted out tunes. Incredible.

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