Mourners praised a weekly newspaper at the funeral of a prolific Facebook user who died alone and whose tragic story brought an online community together to pay for his send-off.

West End Extra, a free newspaper covering the London Borough of Westminster, was credited with making Stephen Doran “famous at last” after the newspaper covered his story.

Stephen is thought to have lived a solitary life and had no family other than his elderly mother, who suffers from dementia, but he was widely known on Facebook for his knowledge of music and film among 350 online friends.

Westminster social services discovered him dead in his flat in Bayswater, West London, after his Facebook friend Ray Johnston, who lives in the Wirral, alerted police when he stopped posting messages.

The initial story run by West End Extra

Stephen, who was 58, is believed to have been dead for two weeks before his body was found.

Ray organised a crowdfunding page which raised more than £2,000 towards Stephen’s funeral, attended by around 20 of the online friends he had never met during his lifetime.

Said Ray:  “He could tell you when a film was on television down to the exact date, he knew when a piece of music had been in the Hit Parade.”

Speaking at his funeral about the Extra’s coverage of the story, Stephen’s Facebook friend Theo Morgan told mourners: “He is famous at last. He is on the front page of the paper.”

Caroline Mortimer, reporter at the West End Extra said: “I’m just glad there managed to be a silver lining to what is ultimately a very sad story about a man dying alone and not being found for two weeks into something more positive.

“I spoke to Stephen’s mother’s carer at the funeral and she thanked me for the story and said she would frame the front page and put it on the wall in his mother’s room. I just hope that it’ll give her some comfort I suppose.”

A copy of the paper was held up during Stephen’s funeral