AS Good Friday will mark the 10th anniversary of the unveiling of the iconic Stan Laurel statue outside Ulverston Coronation Hall, we are taking a look at how the town has celebrated its most famous son.

The £60,000 bronze likeness of Stan and his screen partner Oliver Hardy was officially unveiled on April 19 in 2009 by one of Britain's best-loved comics Ken Dodd.

It was the latest in a long series of Ulverston events which stretched back to 1947 when Stan made a triumphant return to his home town as part of a national tour of theatres with Oliver Hardy and their wives.

Thousands of people turned out in County square in 1947 and it was much the same 10 years ago as Ken Dodd arrived in a Model T Ford — a type of car would have featured in many of Laurel and Hardy's Hollywood movies.

Laurel's real name was Arthur Stanley Jefferson and he was born at 3 Foundry Cottages, later Argyle Street, on June 16 in 1990.

His father was Arthur Jefferson, a comic actor and theatre manager, and Margaret Metcalfe.

The family moved to the north east and the young Stan went to King James' School in Bishop Auckland

He died on Tuesday, February 23 in 1965 and kept his sense of humour to the end.

As he lay dying he said: "I'd rather be skiing than doing this."

His nurse asked: "Do you ski, Mr Laurel?"

He replied: "No, but I'd rather be doing that than doing this."

In 1990, to mark the birth centenary, Ulverston was packed with members of Stan and Ollie's international fan club the Sons of the Desert — named from the title of a 1933 film.

The society's beginnings go back to a meeting which took place in Birmingham in late 1953 between the screen icons and a young American student called John McCabe.

His fan club — divided into more than 200 tents — spread around the world after a first meeting in New York in 1965.

Stan's legacy was also also celebrated in the Ulverston Laurel and Hardy Museum which was opened in 1982 by Bill Cubin.

As town mayor in 1974 he had placed a plaque on Stan's birthplace and in 1978 went to the International Laurel and Hardy Convention in Chicago and met Stan Laurel's daughter Lois and Oliver Hardy's widow Lucille.

When the statue was unveiled 10 years ago it was the start of a busy few weeks for fans of the movie stars, including the 30th United Kingdom Sons of the Desert Convention at the Cumbria Grand Hotel, Grange.