HIS friends and customers ranged from the established Newport business elite to the frankly bohemian and yesterday they gathered for the final 'Time, gentleman, please'.

The funeral of Roger Boswell, during its heyday in the 80s and 90s landlord of the Engineers' Arms in Baneswell was never going to be a conventional affair.

Measured funereal tones and whispered condolences would never have done for the man known universally as Bozzy, the most flamboyant and best-known landlord in Newport.

In its most joyous years you could only just squeeze into the Engineers' on a Monday night when the Acme Jazz Band with Bob Gribble as the lead trombone was in full swing.

Simply to use the 'offices' meant leaving by one door and going outside to skirt the throng and entering by another where the customers were less densely packed.

The funeral service for Roger Boswell who died last Sunday aged 66 was held at Newport Cathedral not only because of the numbers wishing to bid him au revoir but because it stands at the Southern flank of Baneswell, the higgledy-piggledy part of Newport with its steep streets and brightly coloured houses and in many cases equally colourful denizens, that he loved so much.

As on the bright spring afternoon they filed into the cathedral each would have been mulling over his or her favourite recollection of the Engineers' and its exuberant landlord.

Some will have recalled the company of artists and writers.

Alexander Cordell, author of Rape of the Fair Country and many other novels of South Wales was an Engineers' enthusiast.

Some years ago Bozzy was talking to Cordell in the Engineers when a man came up to the author and said "I've read every one of your books"

"Are you sure?" asked Cordell. "There are over 30 of them. How ever did you find the time?"

"I had plenty of that" the man replied. "I was in prison."

Others may remember the time when Roger, for no reason anyone can now recall, served customers dressed as a sumo wrestler.

John Selway, the internationally-renowned artist and a former teacher at Newport art college was a regular as were many of those he taught alongside as well as some of his students.

Unfazed by the eminence of some of his customers yet always with kindly words for those of more modest achievement whose literary tastes ran only as far as The Sporting Life, Bozzy had a cheery and usually earthy word for them all.

There was the great tapas event when Bozzy decided the Engineers' could do with a bit of Mediterranean flavour and laid on free Spanish food.

It was from around this time Bozzy started wearing a beret which he did right up until the last.

Some of the clientele attended the funeral wearing berets as a tribute.

The time that regulars turned up to drink among the ashes and charred timbers despite the fact that fire had gutted the Engineers' men's bar was a scene worthy of John Steinbeck and the inhabitants of Cannery Row.

Every person, each with his or her own memory of Roger Boswell packed the cathedral to the main doors, those at the back craning forward to hear as Bozzy's close friend and best man John Payne the well-known Newport hairdresser recounted stories of their boyhoods.

It was whilst at the Hanbury pub in Carleon that Bozzy met Diane whom he was to marry and who was by his side as landlady of the Engineers.

Chief among the mourners, she sat solemn but composed as the coffin was carried in and later, taken away to the hearse for the short journey to St Woolos' cemetery.

But there was a typical Bozzy flourish which even at this solemn instant brought a smile.

Perched atop the coffin was his trademark beret, a jaunty salute to his very many friends.