ONE of the North-East's oldest men and most celebrated characters has died aged 105.

Fred Dickinson, who still enjoyed a regular glass of beer and a cigarette, died in hospital on Monday.

Tributes were paid yesterday to Mr Dickinson, who was one of the last men in the region who signed up to fight in the First World War.

Margaret Rafferty, who first knew Mr Dickinson as a friend of the family when she was six, helped look after him in his final years.

She said: "I miss him terribly already. I keep thinking 'oh, I'd be making his tea now' and things like that. He was mentally alert right to the end and was a lovely man. I am sorry, but for myself, not him. He had a wonderful life."

Hartlepool Mayor Stuart Drummond said: "I had the pleasure of attending a couple of his recent birthday parties and chatting to him. He was a really nice man who was full of beans and he will be sadly missed."

Mr Dickinson, a regular bridge player who would still visit his local pub, was born in Lincoln in 1899, but moved to Hartlepool in 1924 to work as a mechanic installing heavy machinery.

He joined the Royal Navy in Portsmouth when he was 18. He was a torpedo man on HMS Warrior for nine months, but never saw active service in the First World War.

In the Second World War, he was a hero of the Home Front and organised the region's civil defence plans, for which he was made an MBE.

His first wife, Muriel, died shortly after the couple's golden wedding anniversary. He married again, aged 90, to Hilda, who was ten years his junior, but who died in 1998. Mr Dickinson had no children, but leaves a niece, Susan Prevey.

His funeral will be at St Hilda's, on Hartlepool Headland, next Friday.