An undertaker who organised his own funeral to see who would turn up is facing the fury of his outraged mourners.

Veteran funeral director Baltazar Lemos pretended he had died and organised his own service at a chapel in Curitiba, Brazil, on 18th January.

Details of the service were announced on his social media page.

A video of the event shows a crowd of seated mourners, some dabbing at their tearful eyes with handkerchiefs.

An altar on a low stage covered in wreaths and floral tributes can be seen.

Then, a figure with a bizarre silver hoodie over his face emerges from a door at the back and suddenly reveals himself as Lemos to the astonished crowd.

He said: “I’ve performed 889 farewell ceremonies in these last two years and at some ceremonies there were two people, at others there were 500 people.

“I wanted to know who would come to mine.”

The mourners, however, were less than impressed.

One friend named Pedro did not mince his words when he told local media: “I really want to kill him. You don’t do that.

“I like this b*stard a lot, but you don’t play that kind of joke.

“I felt rough, I almost had a heart attack. He had Facebook friends who ended up in hospital.

“When I see him, the first thing I’ll do is give him a slap in the face, that’s if I don’t smash a champagne bottle on his head.”

Another friend, Rosecleia, was similarly scathing, telling local media: “I didn’t like it. I felt very rough, like many others. I had a panic attack.

“Joking about death is very serious, he crossed a line.”

But Lemos hit back, claiming he had not used the word “death” in his social media post and had spoken instead of a “farewell”.

Those who thought he had died, he claimed, had used their “imagination”.

At the end of his ‘farewell’ speech, Lemos told the assembled crowd: “Be happy, enjoy life.”