FOR years, the people of a North-East town knew their post was coming long before it dropped through their letterbox.

Harry Dunn, who has died at the age of 88, always announced his arrival by whistling a cheerful tune as he delivered the mail around his home town of Crook, County Durham.

He did requests and whistled Happy Birthday for anyone who asked, becoming so well known that he was once paid three guineas to perform on BBC radio.

After retiring from the Royal Mail at 65, Mr Dunn cared for his wife, Meggie, until her death in 1983 and later devoted much of his life to the Normandy Veterans' Association, members of which formed a guard of honour at his funeral at St Catherine's Church, Crook, yesterday.

He had served as a corporal with the Green Howards in North Africa, including El Alamein, and paid annual homage to his former comrades by collecting for the Royal British Legion's poppy appeal.

Born in Stockton, Mr Dunn spent his early career as a salesman for tea company Ringtons, driving a horse and cart around Durham City and surrounding villages. He was also a long-serving committee member of Crook Town Football Club.

For the last four years, he had lived near his daughters, Doreen Newton and her husband Joe, and Margaret Arundale and her husband John, in the Chester-le-Street area.

Mrs Newton said: "He was a man who liked to get things done. He never told us, but he would fill buckets of coal for elderly people on his round, take them a loaf of bread or a bottle of milk and help them in all sorts of ways.

"Everybody knew him and looked forward to him coming. Someone once complained about his whistling because they didn't like being woken up, but it wasn't taken any further."

Mr Dunn's funeral was followed by cremation at Durham.