The biggest send-off for a 50-stone father - in Britain's biggest casket

And so it was perhaps appropriate that his final journey should be an extraordinary one.

After the father-of-one died of heart failure aged 38, his family were determined he should have a dignified send-off.

Scroll down for more ...

To accommodate his formidable 700lb-plus frame, a mahogany casket was built - 7ft 11in long, 4ft 6in wide and 30in deep.

As it wound its way fully laden through the streets of Mr Bamber's home town of Wigan, it weighed more than half a ton.

Alan Roby, of funeral directors Thorley Smith, the firm that supplied the casket, said: "It really was at the very edge of what is dignified. It has got to be the biggest casket ever used in this country.

"And it is a casket rather than a coffin. A casket is a straight rectangular box. It would have been impossible to make the coffin shape at that size."

Scroll down for more ...

He added: "There are no hearses available that would be big enough for a casket that size so there had to be a horse-drawn platform for the journey to the cemetery.

"He might even have been the heaviest man ever to have been buried in this country. The funeral really stretched the capabilities of all the people involved."

Before the family members arrived for the ceremony at Wigan's Ince Cemetery on Friday, the casket had been lowered in place with a mechanical hoist.

It was too heavy for pallbearers. Mr Bamber's widow Nicky, 27, and son Connor, nine, were accompanied by the late man's parents and his six brothers and sisters.

Scores of friends and other relatives paid tribute to a "kind-hearted family man" who had battled to lose weight for most of his adult life.

He had been bedridden for the last eight months. Paramedics were called to the house he shared with his wife and son because he was struggling to breathe.

Scroll down for more ...

He was so large that firemen were brought in to remove his bedroom window so they get him out of his home and take him to hospital.

He died on July 28 with his wife by his side. He had managed to lose 20st several years ago after being put on a diet of nutritious shakes but his diabetes, diagnosed earlier this year, exacerbated his weight problem.

In the weeks leading up to his death his diet consisted of shakes, tea and black coffee as well as a cocktail of pills, including antidepressants.

His brother Ray said: "Mark was a large man, very large, but he had a big heart."

He said his brother had suffered because people had poked fun at him but the scores of friends who turned up at his funeral showed how popular he had been.