Jimmy Savile's 15 nephews and nieces were nervous. The notion of the DJ "lying in state" had initially seemed over the top, despite the many millions of pounds he had raised for good causes.
But within an hour of the bar doors opening at the Queen's hotel, in Leeds, to reveal Savile's coffin beside his last, half-smoked cigar and mounds of Yorkshire white roses, they were reassured.
Their arrangements – not their uncle's – could not have turned out to be more homely, more free from saccharine and, in two words associated with Savile, more wacky and fun.
Hotel staff murmured from time to time about maintaining respect, but even fans in tears were delighted to pass on their anecdotes, all involving jokes.
By early afternoon, Radio Leeds was thinking of trying to find someone in Yorkshire who didn't know Sir Jimmy, or even someone who hadn't benefited from his working one day a week as a volunteer hospital porter at Leeds general infirmary. More than anything else, this anchored what was never really a lying in state; it was a large-scale version of laying out the coffin in the parlour, for friends and family to pay their respects.
"You took me down for my operation," wrote Patricia Smith on one of a pile of loose-leaf pages that matched War and Peace in bulk by the end of the day, and are to be turned into a book of condolence.
A hospital colleague, Elsie Halgey, 83, said: "He really was down to earth and the hospital work helped to keep him that way. He was wacky and he courted publicity but for practical reasons. He used to put it this way: 'You can give money yourself, but the important thing is to get other people to give it too.' "
Savile's coffin was closed and rather less golden than widely advertised – more of a sheen on the surface than the bling which he used so skillfully for fundraising. He would have relished the other news story of the day in Leeds: a campaign to raise £30,000 to keep an Anglo-Saxon hoard of gold rings, found by a metal detector enthusiast, in the city museum.
Some 5,000 visitors recounted endless examples of encounters with Savile in Leeds or Scarborough – his other great love, where he will be buried on Thursday and where the council is determined to beat Leeds to raising a statue. In a final joke which will guarantee his place in books and databases of oddness, he asked to be buried at a 45-degree angle so that he could see the sea. His undertaker Roy Morphet has promised to fix that for him.
One of his tearful fans was Georgette Efthymiou, who was barred by her parents from Savile's pioneering DJ club sessions as a teenager, but knitted him a woolly hat and sneaked out to the infirmary to give it to him.
"He had his hair purple and gold at that time so I did the hat that way," she said. "I used to meet him years later in Roundhay Park where he'd often be in the cafe. He'd always have a word though you'd never get any sense. He went straight into daft jokes."
It was mostly middle-aged fans in the queue at 9.30am, but plenty of younger people called by as well. They included Rachel Rivers, 16, who also met Savile running through Roundhay in his tracksuit, wispy hair waving.
"How he kept it after all that bleach and dyeing, who knows," she said. "He'd always have a 'now then' or 'how's about that then'."
Other memories were triggered by Savile's long and varied years of high-profile work, from the "clunk click" seatbelt campaign through sponsored marathons, Savile's Travels and Jim'll Fix It.
Savile's nephew Roger Foster, 66, a retired teacher from Goole, East Yorkshire, said: "He would have revelled in this because it is what he was about; just mixing with people, meeting with people. His whole life was spent with ordinary people."
On Wednesday is the second of three memorial days in Yorkshire with a requiem mass at St Anne's Roman Catholic cathedral in Leeds, with 400 public seats, 300 invited guests and unlimited room outside. There, the steel coffin will be carried by eight Royal Marines after it has passed both Savile's birthplace and a silent tribute from porter colleagues outside the infirmary.
The mass will see celebrities stay in the pews while the eulogies are given by local friends: his best mate Howard Silverman, a friend from the infirmary, and a running companion, Neil Littlewood, who pounded round Roundhay beside that unmistakable tracksuit.
Savile's eccentric appearance, central to his appeal as both performer and fundraiser, will continue in the privacy of his last resting place. He will be buried with his long hair intact under a Royal Marines beret, in honour of his grit as one of only two civilians to finish a sponsored 30-mile commando march across Dartmoor. The family have again welcomed anyone interested to attend the burial on Thursday.
Savile will be buried with a Help for Heroes charity wristband, but the service will be reminded that he did not only raise money for "easy" popular causes. There will be a tribute from Broadmoor special hospital where he also worked as a volunteer porter and which benefited from his money-raising antics and appeals.