Undertakers in New Zealand have issued a warning to a fake mourner, dubbed 'the Grim Eater', who gatecrashes funerals for the food.

The man attended up to four funerals a week, even taking home leftovers in a 'doggy bag'. Danny Langstraat, a director of Harbour City Funeral Home in Wellington, said his company had distributed a photograph of the intruder and had also alerted grieving families to his presence.

"He was showing up to funeral after funeral and, without a doubt, he didn't know the deceased," Mr Langstraat said. "We saw him three or four times a week. Certainly, he had a backpack with some Tupperware containers so, when people weren't looking, he was stocking up," he told the Dominion-Post newspaper.

Mr Langstraat said the man, in his 40s, was respectably dressed and did not look like someone who lived on the streets. "He was always very quiet and polite, and did as the rest of the mourners did in paying his respects." The man has stopped turning up since a staff member took him aside and had a stern word in his ear, telling him he could not take food home.

Tony Garing, president of the Funeral Directors Association, said it was difficult to stop people attending funerals. "If it's in a church, or even in a funeral home, if a notice has been published in the paper it's essentially a public event."

When I think of funeral food I always think of finger rolls with tinned salmon and cucumber slices...

An excellent disguise! And respectful as well!

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