Standing room only at Lange farewell

Between the Crown limos parked behind the marquee, the Auckland Pacific Gospel Choir in their light-blue robes are doing a last, lilting run-through in the warming sun. "Watch the key change," warns their leader.

Helen Clark arrives, hugs David Lange's bushy-bearded brother Peter, and tells Mad Butcher Peter Leitch he is "dressed for the part" in his apron.

"Well I've got work to do Prime Minister," he says, as he and his staff prepare 100,000 sausages for the barbie, should they be needed by wellwishers for Lange - or for league's Stacey Jones, later in the day.

The Ericsson Stadium's big top is only half-full now, but eventually nearly 3000 people will make it standing room only.

Peter Lange's twin sister Margaret - now the family matriarch by 20 minutes, she points out - finishes her cigarette, and a stage manager hurries her up the makeshift steps behind the stage.

On the stage and on the big screen, Helen Clark remembers "the big man, with the big voice and the big heart and the common touch".

Such was his reach that many here are too young to remember him at all - but they know what he meant to their families, to South Auckland, to New Zealand.

"I asked my mother the other night and she just couldn't stop talking about him," says Heath Manukau of hip hop band Nesian Mystik, waiting outside. "He must have been a good person if my mum liked him."

The Mad Butcher waves his arms, conducting a symphony of sausages. "I don't have to be PC," he says. "If I thought he was an asshole I'd tell you. But he was a bloody good bloke - I've seen him do some good things."

Master of ceremonies Gary McCormick checks his notes in the darkened wings, while on stage Sir Edmund Hillary pays tribute to the "great man" whose nuclear-free policy inspired in him a rare passion for politics.

Singer Dave Dobbyn looks very different from the young pop-rocker who bounded on stage to accept a music award from Lange in 1984.

He loves the way Lange shunned any kind of pomp and circumstance: "He just had a great vibe with the people, an authenticity which I hadn't seen since Norman Kirk."

The stage manager cuts in to tell him there will be time for only one of his two songs, because one of the speakers went on too long.

But today is not a day for rules and schedules. Dobbyn takes the stage, plays a chord, and the sound cuts out. "Whoops," he says, then launches into song. Despite the instructions, nothing could stop him following up with "Loyal".

Ellerslie mum Belinda Brown is dabbing at her eyes, hugging her four-year-old twins. "The place he lived, the people he chose to be with, just seemed to be common-place, and that's a great thing. "

As Hokianga elder John Clarich ends his tribute with a waiata, Lange's first wife Naomi rises to her feet, small and gracious as when she accompanied the newly-elected prime minister onstage in 1984.

She comforts her son Roy's tearful wife, Mitu, through a "wonderful" service. What will David Lange be remembered for? "Humour, one would hope," she says.

Lange's wife Margaret Pope, who grieved at a private funeral service earlier in the week, has chosen to stay quietly at home with their daughter Edith, 9.

After the service, Roy Lange signs a copy of his father's memoirs and greets well-wishers with that familiar drawling warmth.

Finally, the hundreds who felt as if they were family begin to disperse, and his son can reflect. "He was a truly great tree that you just wanted to hug on to, and you felt secure."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY