Son loses dad's ashes in Tesco bag during nine-hour pub crawl

A man has appealed for help in finding his dad's ashes which he said he lost in a Tesco bag during a nine-hour pub crawl.

Stan Blade, 39, planned to make a TikTok video of himself visiting pleasure rides at Southend, Essex, with dad Stephen Jewitt's ashes.

But instead of visiting the bumper cars on Southend Pier, he bumped into a group of old friends and ended up on a pub crawl in his former home town.

Sometime during the impromptu drinking session, he said he misplaced the shopping bag containing a wooden casket which held the ashes of his late dad who died aged 60.

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Blade, who now lives in Leicester, said he only discovered his mistake when finally arriving home just after midnight on 18 March, having drunk six tins of Stella and five pints of lager in a couple of pubs.

He added he confessed to his stepmother Emma Hopkins, 49, who had previously told him he could not take the ashes out of her home.

Musician Blade said: “I came home, and my step mum asked ‘where is your dad?’

“She was not pleased with me at all, and I do not blame her."

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He added: "My dad was a really funny bloke and he would have absolutely loved the idea of me riding a rollercoaster with his ashes by my side.

“He had a good sense of humour, so I just wanted to do something to pay tribute to that as I haven’t visited my hometown in a while.

“The idea was to take him to the beach and go on the bumper cars and get an ice cream, you know all the stereotypical things you do at the beach.

“But I ended up bumping into friends and getting drunk along the seafront."

After he realised his dad was missing, Blade returned to every pub he had been to with his friends but no one had seen his dad’s ashes.

He last saw the wooden casket near Adventure Island on the seafront.

Blade made a TikTok with his step-mum to appeal for information on the whereabouts of the ashes.

In reply to his question, “are you ready to see the funny side yet?” she said: "Not really no, I've f****ng had those ashes for 12 years.

"I told you not to take them to the seafront. All you want to do is do things on TikTok."

Blade's dad died in 2011 at age 60 from complications of alcohol abuse.