AN MP has paid tribute to his ‘best friend’ and a ‘jolly good bloke’ as family and friends said goodbye to Sir David Amess MP at a touching service.

Today, those closest to the Southend West MP came together at St Mary’s Church in Prittlewell for a memorial service.

The 69-year-old veteran MP was stabbed to death at a constituency surgery in Leigh on October 15.

Speaking before today’s service, Rayleigh and Wickford MP Mark Francois, who was invited by Sir David’s family to deliver the eulogy, told the BBC the MP of 38 years was his ‘best friend in Westminster’.

"Our electors employ us to represent them, in a contract renewable every few years. We work for them, and not the other way round, and no one was ever more conscious of that than David Amess,” Mr Francois said to those who had gathered inside St Mary’s to pay their respects.

"Boy, did David Amess honour the contract with his employers and in his own inimitable style. He was the original Essex cheeky chappy.”

Mr Francois said Sir David has been beloved by his constituents, as evidenced by the crowds lining the roads outside the church and along the procession route.

"Just look at the turnout here today, in this most beautiful house of god, which before long, will form part of the city of Southend, forever, so he won in the end,” Mr Francois said, referencing Sir David’s campaign to have Southend named a city – a wish granted in the wake of his death.

“The David Amess I knew never yielded on an important point of principle to anyone,” Mr Francois continued. “So neither will we. Despite this awful tragedy, we will keep clam, and carry on, because I earnestly believe, that is what he would have wanted us to do.

"And so, we come to say farewell, to Sir David Amess. A wonderful husband and father to Lady Julia and their children. A fine parliamentarian and an absolutely brilliant constituency MP.

"In the end, he really was, quite literally, a jolly good bloke."