Ashes to Ashes: Bowie's death fuels demand for cremations with no mourners

Bowie, who died a year ago, had said he wanted to “go without any fuss”, with no funeral, family or friends present.

Since his passing, the market for “direct cremations”, which cost a fraction of conventional burials or cremations, has tripled, with a similar rise expected this year, a firm of funeral directors said.

It is estimated that one in 20 bereaved families now choose to have a direct cremation, carried out in the days immediately following a death, usually with no-one in attendance and with the ashes returned to the family afterwards.

Although the procedure circumvents the wake and other traditional funeral events, a memorial service at a later date is still possible.

With no casket, headstone or funeral director, the cost of a direct cremation is often little more than £1,000, less than a third the price of a burial supervised by a funeral director.

Catherine Powell, co-founder of Pure Cremation, said: “Losing a loved one is a highly emotional time for all concerned and relatives are often faced with a quandary in terms of what they feel they should do rather than what the deceased would have wanted them to do.

“It may be that the person who has died always wanted a non-religious send-off. It could also be that they had outlived all their friends, or the immediate family is spread across the world making it very difficult for them to gather to pay their last respects within the time constraints imposed by a traditional funeral or simply that the deceased didn’t want any fuss, as in the case of David Bowie.”