Former television chef Keith Floyd has been mourned at a humanist funeral service in Bristol.

The gastronome and writer died of a heart-attack aged 65 earlier this month.

Floyd’s partner Celia Martin – at whose Dorset home he died – as well as his biographer James Steen attended the funeral on Wednesday morning.

The ceremony featured a reading of Rudyard Kipling’s poem If and a song entitled Keith Floyd Blues by Bill Padley.

Stand-up comedian Jim Davidson, a friend of Floyd’s for 25 years, was one of the mourners in attendance and flew to the UK from Dubai for the service.

"He was such a positive man in a very difficult world," the former Generation Game host commented. "He was the first of a kind.

"It didn’t matter what he cooked, he would just swig that glass of wine and we all loved him."

Television producer David Pritchard, who discovered Floyd at his Bristol restaurant, told the BBC: "Before he arrived, most cooking programmes were sensible."

Renowned for his unique style of presenting, Floyd shot to fame in the 1980s with cookery shows such as Floyd on Fish, Floyd on France and Floyd’s American Pie.

His offscreen life was more tumultuous, with all four of his marriages ending in divorce, and bankruptcy declared in 1996.

He also suffered a small stroke in 2002 and was banned from driving for 32 months in November 2004 after a crash in Wiltshire.

Floyd had undergone five serious operations for bowel cancer this year, having been diagnosed with the disease in July.

Married four times, Floyd is survived by a son from his first marriage and a daughter from his second.

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