SELF-made millionaire Billy Bates never took a holiday abroad and preferred a pint with his mates in his local rather than the high life.
But tomorrow the garage and salvage yard owner is to have a funeral fit for a king, complete with horsedrawn hearse, doves, a brass band and specially imported American bronze coffin.
His family had even arranged for him to be laid to rest in his own specially-built mausoleum at the bottom of his garden.
However, they have had to opt for a more humble churchyard burial after executors of his estate ruled that the move would devalue the property.
Born in Salford, the father-of-four rose from humble beginnings through sheer hard graft and determination to building up his own businesses and provide for his wife, Beryl, and children Julie, Tony, Victor and William.
When he died on February 28, he was living in a £2million house in Victoria Road, Heaton, and owned the Leigh Road Garage in Atherton and the Howe Bridge salvage yard, also in Atherton.
“He never took a day off in 19 years, including Christmas Day,” said his daughter Julie.
“He built everything up from nothing and was never extravagant.
He liked a pint of Boddingtons, his garden and good, old fashioned home-made food.”
Mr Bates and his wife separated five years ago and when he became ill with cancer in November last year his daughter moved in to care for him.
Eager to fulfil his dying wishes, his children commissioned the mini-chapel to be built at the bottom of his oneand- a-half-acre garden and hoped to lay him to rest there in a marble tomb.
But to avoid legal wrangles plans have now changed and tomorrow, on what would have been his 67th birthday, they are ensuring Mr Bates still gets the red carpet treatment.
At 10am a hearse pulled by six black horses, each wearing a blanket embroidered with his name, sets off from Leigh Road garage accompanied by a brass band en route to a service at Daisy Hill Parish Church where a red carpet will be laid to the entrance. A CD the family found of Mr Bates singing the Dean Martin song Little Ole Wine Drinker Me will be heard and a Scottish piper will play before he is taken to Westhoughton Parish Church for burial and where 67 white doves will be released over his grave.
Around 2,000 people are expected to attend the funeral which will be followed by a wake in a marquee at Mr Bates’ local, The Howfener, in Westhoughton, where mourners will tuck into his favourite pea and ham soup and black pudding, before celebrating his life with a firework display and Chinese lanterns.
“He always said ‘make sure I go out with a bang’ and so that’s what we’re doing,” said Miss Bates
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