IT’S the toughest job Les Tyler has ever had to do, but he is keeping a promise by digging his own father’s grave.

Mr Tyler, 47, from Didcot, is mourning the loss of his father George Tyler, 72, who died following a long battle with prostate cancer on June 20.

Funeral services directors across Oxfordshire are now preparing to attend George Tyler’s funeral on Saturday to pay their respects to the county’s longest-serving grave-digger.

Les Tyler, a former pupil of John Mason School in Abingdon, joined the family firm at the age of 16 and will pay the ultimate tribute to his father.

Mr Tyler said: “I always promised dad that I would dig his grave.

“It will be very emotional and it will not be easy, but in a way it would be wrong if I did not do it.

“We have tried to follow dad’s wishes to the letter and willl place his shovel, spade and pickaxe on top of his coffin.

“He also requested a wreath spelling out the word ‘dad’.”

Mr Tyler, said his father, a dad of six, was a gravedigger for more than 40 years and was part of the team that looked after the burial of Sir Winston Churchill’s wife Clementine, in 1977, at St Martin’s Church in Bladon, near Woodstock.

His father was also an extra in a Sherlock Holmes film in 1990, starring Edward Woodward and Anthony Andrews.

Mr Tyler said: “My father started out working part-time with his brother Frank and then started the family firm in 1973.

“Before then most churches had their own village sextons as gravediggers.

“Dad was still digging graves up until about three years ago when he had to give up because of illness.

“I joined the firm in 1980 and it has always been a family affair.

“My mum Marion, who is 71, used to come and help me fill in the graves when I was starting out, and my brother Paul, who is now 49, and sister Pauline, 42, joined in as well.

“Dad worked on about 600 or 700 graves a year so he must have dug about 25,000 graves over the past 40 years.”

Funeral director Michael Didcock, of Didcot-based M & J Didcock funeral services, said: “George will be missed by everyone in the funeral service industry.

“He was quite a character and always very cheerful, despite his profession.”

George Tyler and his wife moved to Sutton Courtenay in the 1960s and lived in Bradstocks Way.

He leaves wife Marion, sons Les and Paul, daughters Sheryl, Georgina, Jeanette, and Pauline, and his grandchildren.

The funeral is being held at All Saints Church, Sutton Courtenay, at 2pm.

He will be buried in Appleford, the village where he was born.