I've conducted thousands of funerals but when my son, three, died, I couldn't cry for a year

Howard Hodgson revolutionised the British funeral care industry so successfully he was nicknamed 'Mr Death' and received an award from Mrs Thatcher. Yet, as he admits, his experience could not prepare him for a devastating personal bereavement... and don't ask him about his own send-off

- Karen Rockett

IF A friend or relative died in the Eighties, the chances are they were buried or cremated by Howard Hodgson’s funeral firm. Such was his ubiquity he was known as Mr Death, but with his mop of blond hair, ageing rock star looks and penchant for flash cars and fast women, he made an unlikely funeral director.

Now the man who has met nine Prime Ministers and is on familiar terms with King Charles, of whom he wrote an unauthorised biography 20 years ago, has penned his own life story revealing how he revolutionised the British funeral business.

From the back streets of Birmingham, this fourth-generation funeral director has made £70million from the fate that awaits us all: enough to live in Monaco and buy a super yacht.

But it was a different story back in 1975 when Hodgson, who was married to first wife Marianne and had a baby son to support, was forced to borrow £14,000 to buy his family’s ailing funeral firm. The Midland Bank wanted to foreclose on the business he had just saved and the firm had so little credit it had to buy coffins with cash only.

Howard, now 74, says: “In the post war period, British funerals were all very much the same and people generally died at home.

When a person died, the undertaker would come round to the house, put a couple of pennies on the eyes, bandage the jaw to keep it shut.

“The body would be measured up for a coffin and then when that was made and delivered to the house, the body would be brought down to the front parlour and placed in the coffin.

“People would come round to pay their respects, the drinking would start and carry on after the funeral.

“Funerals were generally religious, impersonal and the same.”

But a trip to America by his funeral director father, Paul, changed all that.