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Thousands of mourners follow Dainton’s funeral procession |
Final farwell to ‘The Bear’ – Thousands line the streets in tribute to DaInton
SOME of the faces in the churchyard bore scars from battles better left forgotten, ridges and dents across the forehead and cheekbones from Middlesbrough away, a night at Everton, or a clash with rivals from West Ham.
Some were better preserved – the unmistakable faces of former Arsenal players like striker Ian Wright and celebrities from the worlds of television and music, including Little Britain comics Matt Lucas and David Walliams and Chris Lowe from the Pet Shop Boys.
Some had bought new suits for the occasion. Some thought it more appropriate to wear Arsenal red and white.
Whatever you thought of Dainton Connell, the leader of the Arsenal hooligan mob by day, bodyguard to the stars by night, his funeral service on Friday morning was a rare sight.
More than 2,000 took to the streets, marching from a shrine outside Arsenal’s new Emirates stadium to Mary Magdalene Church stopping traffic in Holloway Road. Inside the chapel, every seat was taken, with at least 1,000 listing to the prayers and tributes on speakers outside.
Mr Connell, 46, better known across north London as The Bear, or ‘Denton’, died two weeks ago in a car crash in Moscow. There were cheers and tears, and plenty of phwooooarrrrrring (the booming noise that friends said Mr Connell used to make on the terraces).
At one moment when Reverend Brooke Lunn said Mr Connell would have been delighted that Arsenal were currently riding high in the Premiership, there was terrace-style chanting in the church.
Pet Shop Boys keyboardist Chris Lowe, a close friend, recited a prayer. Other familiar faces in the chapel included boxer Frank Bruno and former Arsenal defender Lee Dixon and journalist Janet-Street Porter.
Mr Connell’s daughter Tiffany chose to read out an internet tribute which said national newspapers had ignored her father’s death because they were consumed by the celebrity of professional footballers.
The New Journal and its sister paper the Islington Tribune were the only newspapers in the country to run an obituary.
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