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A smoker's dying wish was fulfilled yesterday when a hearse carried his coffin and the sign "Smoking Killed Me" through his home town.

Dick Whittamore ordered stark warnings be displayed by his coffin and gravestone to persuade the young to quit the habit.

Passers-by stopped to watch as the hearse drove through Dover on the way to St Mary's Cemetery. The town's former assistant theatre manager suffered from lung disease emphysema for years, caused by cigarette toxins, after smoking heavily in his youth. Dick, real name Albert, died at 85 in February of a minor heart attack. Funeral director Paul Sullivan, 36, said the request, for signs in the typeface of cigarette health warnings, was "unusual".

He said: "He gave specific instructions. It's a very graphic image. We are to leave one of the printed boards by the grave for one week." His friend, journalist Terry Sutton, 80, said: "Dick was a great publicist - he loved the days when he worked at the Hippodrome Theatre. He was a heavy smoker in his younger days and did it to warn young people."