A former cinema manager has died aged 84.

John Larcombe was for many years the manager at the Odeon Cinema on the corner of Rochester High Street and Star Hill until its closure in 1981. It has since been demolished.

He subsequently moved to manage the Granada Cinema in Maidstone, which was later renamed The Cannon and then the ABC.

Born in Salisbury on July 13, 1938, Mr Larcombe trained first as a hospital nurse, and he spent two years working at a hospital in Germany.

Later he joined the Odeon chain and worked at cinemas across the country, including its iconic venue in Leicester Square, London, and in Scotland.

A natural showman, he would often arrange foyer displays, imaginatively linking local firms to his cinema’s new releases – a Rochester office stationery firm for the release of Dolly Parton’s 9 to 5, and a visit by the Gills football team to coincide with the release of Escape to Victory, a film about Allied POWs who use a game of football to escape their camp .

Mr Larcombe always wore an evening suit and stood in the foyer to greet customers arriving for the main showing and again to say goodnight as they left.

He won multiple showmanship awards, including one for screening a re-run of Gone With The Wind during the week of the 1987 hurricane.

Mr Larcombe occasionally became frustrated with the cinema chain’s national deals, which forced him to show the latest release in the largest of the three screens of his multiplex, even if other films were proving more popular.

He once ran Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs in both screens 2 and 3 at Rochester, where he had full houses, while Blue Lagoon played to an empty theatre in screen 1.

When the Maidstone cinema closed, he returned to nursing, working at the Maidstone Opthalmic Hospital in Church Street until retirement.

His politics were staunchly Liberal Democrat, and he stood twice for the council in Medway, both times unsuccessfully.

His friend, Emma Wright, said: “John was a very funny man, alway cracking jokes and he loved helping people. He was fond of music, but film was his passion.”

Mr Larcombe never married and was a resident of Allington for 30 years. He spent his last months in Bradbury House, a care home on the RBLI village at Aylesford, where he passed away from cancer on May 6.

His cremation will be at Vinters Park Crematorium in Maidstone on Friday, June 9, at 11am. All are welcome and friends ask that mourners wear colourful clothes, not black.