EVEN IN death, Hunter S Thompson, the self-styled inventor of the “gonzo” school of journalism, was ready for one final blast. Last night he was due to make his final exit from an upright cannon taller than the Statue of Liberty and shaped like a fist..

By now, if Johnny Depp’s ambitious plans have succeeded, the ashes of his friend Hunter Stockton Thompson — self-proclaimed madman, drug addict and gun enthusiast — have been spread across hundreds of miles of the Rocky Mountains.

Thompson, who shot himself in the head six months ago, aged 67, left precise plans for his wake, which, he insisted, should be a celebration of whisky, wit and friendship.

The cannon erected on his farm near Aspen, Colorado, has been designed by Depp, who portrayed Thompson at his drug-consuming height in the 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, based on Thompson’s cult book.

It is believed to be anchored inside a 54ft-high sculpture in the shape of a “gonzo” fist, Thompson’s two-thumbed personal insignia representing the briefly fashionable style of “gonzo” reporting that focused primarily on the writer’s subjective experiences.

The device is said to stand on a 100ft-high dagger-shaped platform to ensure that Thompson’s ashes, packed inside 34 shells, reach at least 500ft in the air before exploding in bright colours and then drifting across his beloved Owl Farm and the mountain slopes. Michael Cleverly, a friend and neighbour, said: “It’ll go straight up. It’ll just be taken by the wind.”

The writer’s widow, Anita Thompson, 32, has broken only one of her husband’s final commands. Still pinned to the refrigerator door in their kitchen, where he killed himself on February 20, is a note which reads: “Never call 911 [the emergency services]. Never. This means You. HST.”

But to guard the 250 celebrity guests at the wake and prevent intruders ripping off tarpaulins protecting the cannon, police have been deployed around the late rebel’s compound.

Although Owl Farm was chosen for its isolation and is protected by all the latest security gadgets, sheriffs have blocked roads to prevent the public from watching the fireworks that Thompson so adored, or the paparazzi from taking pictures of mourners. Among those invited are Jack Nicholson, John Cusack and Sean Penn.

Depp, 42, who is helping Anita Thompson organise the party, has been asking guests if they will take part in a “Mexican send-off” in which they will fire volleys of bullets into the air from Thompson’s collection of guns and rifles.

Depp helped fund the cannon by persuading Ralph Steadman, 69, the British cartoonist who made his American reputation with his drawings for the original publication of Fear and Loathing in 1971, to produce a range of labels for 1,500 bottles of “gonzo beer”. The bottles were sold for £50 each and some included “magic ticket” invitations to the celebrations.

Anita Thompson said the cannon would probably be dismantled after the ceremonies and may be erected elsewhere, as soon as she has found a permanent, and possibly lucrative, home for the 1,500 boxes of correspondence left behind by the compulsive writer.

Several American universities, such as Texas at Austin and Emory in Atlanta, are believed to be interested in creating a Thompson archive to honour a literary outlaw who their citizenry would have dismissed as a “longhair” during an era in which his writing made its greatest impact.

Yesterday, as the guests gathered, residents of the hamlet of Woody Creek lined up to protect the celebrity’s privacy. One local said: “I never liked the man, thought he was a hippie through and through, but I don’t like all the gawping visitors either.”

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