Music fans from across south Essex were today in mourning following the death of Ian Dury - one of Britain's best loved cultural icons.

Dury, 57, who claimed to have caught polio after swimming in a pool along Southend seafront when he was seven, was hailed a renaissance geezer with his clever Cockney lyrics.

He had been suffering from cancer of the liver and died yesterday morning at his north London home.

Born in Upminster in 1942, he is best remembered for his work with the Blockheads and had hits with Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick and Reasons To Be Cheerful.

He even adopted the area with lines in songs such as "Billericay Dickie" and "a bit of posh from Burnham-on-Crouch".

However it soon emerged Ian was not quite the Cockney he claimed to be when his mother turned out to be a well-spoken graduate and his accent was partly a reaction to his despised High Wycombe grammar school.

He appeared with the Blockheads at the Blue Boar pub in Southend in the late 70s and also performed at the Cliffs Pavilion.

Blockheads' members included former Dr Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson, from Canvey.

Ian was also a star of many television programmes and films and recently made a TV commercial for the Sunday Times in Southend.

He contracted polio when he was a child and the illness damaged one arm and leg so badly that he needed calipers. The disease did not dampen his spirits and Dury called himself "Britain's best-known raspberry ripple" and flew the flag for the acceptance of disability.

Shortly before his death he had flew out to Sri Lanka with pop star Robbie Williams to highlight the need to vaccinate children against polio. He hid the fact he had cancer for three years but went public when it spread to his liver and became inoperable.

Ian said: "You don't have cancer, it has you. But it's better than being hit by a bus tomorrow, you have time to sort yourself out."

He leaves four children, and a wife.

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