When you’re gone it’s a great way to go. Nor do you need to be a dyed-in-the-wool biker to want your last trip to be a fast one.

Paul Sinclair, a minister and the creator and rider of possibly the world’s first fully enclosed motorcycle sidecar hearse, says: “I recently had a couple ring me up to say they’d seen the hearse at a junction near Leicester on the M1. They said they were in no hurry to go but when they did they’d both like to go in the sidecar.”

Sinclair is a bona fide man of the cloth but he’s patently no stranger to leather. The Glasgow-born, Leicestershire-living pastor has been into bikes since he was a child and ridden them since he was 16.

The idea for the motorcycle hearse took shape in 1998. For hardcore bikers taking a last ride in a car is unthinkable, and for an older generation motorcycles and sidecars were an integral part of their lives.

“They may have courted on them, brought up a family on them. So, in a similar way to an even older generation having horse-drawn hearses, why not a motorcycle one?” says Sinclair.

A Triumph Speed Triple hauls the custom-built hearse all over the country and, as well as travelling at stately speeds when part of a cortege, Sinclair can up the pace when required. “For a lot of bikers a ‘final run’ is a really important thing. Bikers tend to give a deceased mate a run instead of flowers, and it means they can follow or we can do a run and then go and do the more formal procedures.

“The last ride can be a great thing for the bereaved, too. It gives them the chance to feel that they’ve actually done something for a loved one. And it can achieve far more than I sometimes can in a sermon. Although I’m a minister I don’t have to do a service. Some folk want humanist services, and that’s not a problem for me.

“I’m always a bit nervous at a funeral when people are getting out of the cars and looking at the hearse, but most of the time they’re grabbing me to talk about it. Sometimes you’d think people had been to a party, not in a frivolous way, but instead of ‘Oh, wasn’t it terrible, his last years were awful’, you get ‘Isn’t that great, I remember when he had that Norton . . .’ It’s a big kick making people a bit happier on what is often a very sad occasion.”

Sinclair’s choice of a Triumph was based on the marque’s broad appeal to all types of motorcyclist. “A Harley-Davidson would have been expensive and, being air-cooled, not too great for slow speeds. Some Japanese sportsbike riders don’t like them and some Harley riders don’t like Japanese bikes. The Triumph fitted the bill.”

Not surprisingly, the beautifully made hearse has attracted as much attention within the funeral business as it does when it’s making a final journey. It was unveiled officially at the Kensal Green cemetery open day in west London in July last year, where it scooped the award for most unusual hearse.

The trade has taken to it well, with only two out of hundreds of funeral directors being less than positive about three-wheeled transport to that final resting place.

And there’s nobody Sinclair wouldn’t carry — “Unless they’re still breathing, of course. I’d have to draw the line at people who are still alive.”