Comic and promoter Malcolm Hardee has been found dead in the Thames.

Malcolm Hardee, one of alternative comedy's most colourful characters, has been found dead in the River Thames.

Divers recovered his body from Greenland Dock, where he lived on a houseboat, on Wednesday morning. He was 55.

He is believed to have fallen from his dinghy on Sunday night as he made his way home from the floating pub he ran on the other side of the dock, the Wibbly Wobbly.

Friends and family gathered on the boat today, and poured his favourite drink, rum and coke, into the dock in his memory, followed by a packet of cigarettes and white lilies.

As a performer, Hardy was known for his naked stunts;¼ indeed his break came when he performed the naked balloon dance on Chris Tarrant's OTT in the Eighties.

His antics were legendary. He once drove a tractor through another performer's Edinburgh show, and had a tendency to urinate on hecklers.

He ran the most notorious club in the early days of alternative comedy, The Tunnel Club in Rotherhide, South London, where all today's biggest names played. Later, he opened Up The Creek in Greenwich.

Comic Stewart Lee once called him "South London's king of comedy, ¼a natural clown who in any decent country would be a national institution."