Park bench provides musical refuge for fans of a popular poet and diamond geezer

Ian Dury, popular poet and professional diamond geezer, once said that he never wanted to see his music written down. But perhaps he would have approved of it being downloaded on to a solar-powered musical park bench surrounded by tulips.

That, at least, was the fervent belief of friends, family and fans who gathered yesterday at Pembroke Lodge in Richmond Park, south-west London, to unveil the latest in hi-tech garden furniture as a memorial to the man who invented the phrase "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll".

The bench, which was donated by Dury's family and paid for by his record company, Warner/Chappell Music, puts the songs of the gravelly voiced musician in his favourite place of refuge from the pressures of fame. Dury, who had cancer, died aged 56 just over two years ago.

Engraved with the title of one of the singer's best known tracks, "Reasons To Be Cheerful", the bench has two headphone jacks in the arm rests to allow visitors to plug in their own headphones and listen to eight of Dury's songs and his interview on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.

Overlooking sweeping views across London, listeners can enjoy herbaceous borders of bluebells and pansies at the same time as enjoying the strains of classic songs by Ian Dury and the Blockheads including "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" and "Sweet Gene Vincent".

Gemima Dury, 33, the late musician's eldest daughter, explained why the site had been chosen.

She said: "My dad used to come to this park several times a week for decades. He loved it. It was one of the places where he felt he could go without being spotted all the time." She added: "There were two things he was very passionate about – getting out into the countryside and the availability of music. He would have loved the idea of a bench where people could listen to his songs and enjoy the view.''

Visitors to the bench, in an area of Richmond Park known as Poets' Corner, will be able to listen to the music thanks to solar panels that power computer memory chips containing the songs and radio interview. In the recording, Dury, who walked with a heavy limp afterr suffering childhood polio, talks of his Essex roots and his musical career.

Elderly walkers in the park yesterday were mostly positive about the benefits of the new bench. Rose Mackintosh, 73, from nearby Petersham, normally a devotee of Bach and Mozart, was happy to borrow a pair of headphones for a quick listen.

She said: "Do you know, it's actually rather good," she said. "Not normally my thing but the one about the rhythm stick is a very nice tune."

A few yards from the memorial bench an ode is engraved to the original visitor to Poets' Corner, an 18th-century poet called James Thomson, whose words seemed particularly appropriate yesterday. "Ye, who from London's smoke and turmoil fly/ To see a purer air and brighter sky/ Think of the Bard who dwelt in yonder dell/ Who sang so sweetly what he loved so well.''