Exactly 25 years ago today, one of the biggest names of the 1970s and 80s was settling down with his son to watch the Champions League quarter-final clash between Italian giants Inter Milan and Manchester United.

Rod Hull – who had commanded millions of TV viewers with Emu – had experienced the most remarkable life; full of fame, adoration, royal patronage and a seemingly endless fortune.

Yet, at the age of 63, he had fallen far from his peak. Living in a dilapidated cottage in Icklesham on the Kent and East Sussex border, his second marriage had hit the rocks and his fortune – which just years before had seen him living in an historic 32-bedroom mansion in Medway – gone.

Just a little over 10 years before, he’d been personally invited by Diana, Princess of Wales, to perform at Prince William’s fourth birthday party at their home in Kensington Palace. The world had been his oyster.

However, he had adjusted to his new penniless position in life; eking out a modest existence – a popular local at a nearby pub and, even in his latter years, remaining something of a ladies’ man.

But as the game on the TV played out, not for the first time, his TV aerial was playing up. So at half-time his son, Oliver – then 19 – offered to climb onto the bungalow roof to fix it.

In a fateful move, his father insisted he would do it – as he had countless times before. It was the last time he would be seen alive.

Speaking at the inquest into his father’s death, his son explained: “He said he would go up and fix the aerial. I was to stay and tell him when the signal was good by leaning out of the window and shouting."

Moments later, he heard a light thud followed by a heavier one.

On rushing outside, his father had fallen from the one-storey building and through an adjoining greenhouse. He had suffered a severe skull fracture and chest injuries.

“I think he just fell straight from the ladder,” his son added, raising concerns at the sharp angle his father would often position the ladder against the cottage wall.

Oliver said he could not find a pulse when he found him and although rushed to hospital by emergency crews, was pronounced dead on arrival at Hasting’s Conquest Hospital. A coroner would rule it as an accidental death.

It brought down the curtain on a rollercoaster of a life - one which started right here in Kent.

Born on Sheppey in 1935, he was raised in a council house, attending Delamark Road School and the County Technical School – both in Sheerness and both now demolished.

Rod's father, Len, was a bus conductor and a member of the Maidstone and District Bus Company concert party. It wasn't long before Rod, who loved entertaining, had joined, too.

He and childhood friend Bill Wallace, formed a comedy double-act as teenagers. Red-haired Rod the comedy turn – Bill his straight man.

But success was proving hard to come by and after doing his National Service, he’d trained as an electrician; marrying his childhood sweetheart Sandra, a hairdresser. But life was about to throw his dreams of fame a lifeline.

His sister, Joan, had left Sheppey to start a new life in Australia. She had written him a number of letters extolling not only the virtues of her new homeland but also the emerging television industry Down Under – an opportunity she felt he should try to exploit.

Taking advantage of a £10 one-way assisted package, both he and his wife left Kent behind and followed in his sister’s footsteps.

Initially joining a TV station as an electrician, he quickly made it clear he wanted a role in front of the cameras and found himself on Channel 9 performing what a station executive described as a ‘Stan Laurel’ role in a number of slap stick comedies.

He quickly established himself as a performer in children’s TV – which included a role alongside famous Aussie kangaroo Skippy. Meanwhile, his family was growing – with he and Sandra having two daughters, Debbie and Danielle.

But then things changed. Rod claimed he found the Emu puppet in a cupboard – a discarded prop. Others say that he was told to perform with it. Either way, it was a turning point that would take him from modest fame in Australia to household name status back at home.

Emu was a non-speaking puppet controlled by Rod, with a fake limb around it to give the impression it was being carried; its personality brought to life by his movements and its penchant for grabbing anyone it took a fancy to. Wrestling them to the floor if necessary.

After touring with Alf Garnett star Warren Mitchell, Rod made two significant life choices.

Firstly, he decided to return to the UK – taking his family with him. Then, shortly after their arrival, he dropped a bomb on his wife and children by telling them he was leaving. He took up, instead, with Cher Hylton, a 25-year-old commercial artist, he’d met Down Under.

They lived in Milstead, near Sittingbourne.

Despite his home life upheaval, he was determined to make a career with Emu. After dazzling a prospective agent in London by delivering a full-on Emu skit, he was signed up and in 1972 got his first TV appearance. It was an instant hit.

Later that same year he appeared on the Royal Variety Show – bringing the house down with Emu wrestling with the show’s host before a TV audience of some 18 million. He grabbed all the newspaper headlines the day after too after Emu chomped down on the Queen Mother’s bouquet at the end-of-show meet-and-greet line-up with the royal guest.

“It was,” said his agent at the time, Laurie Mansfield, “like having a hit record. The offers just started flooding in.”

A year later, he had secured his own children’s TV show – Emu’s Broadcasting Company. In 1976 he and Emu famously tangled with chat show king Michael Parkinson, dragging him to the floor as Emu ripped up his script. Some suggested the PR masterstroke was Rod’s response to being forced to bring Emu on set with him rather than being interviewed on his own merits.

Already, at this relatively early stage in his career, the performer was becoming concerned that his own talents were reliant on the presence of the bird. He wanted to be recognised in his own right – not just as Emu’s, ahem, right-hand man.

As the 1980s dawned, Rod Hull and Emu were known across the land. Despite any reservations about Emu’s limiting of his ability to spread his creative wings, the work kept coming – he appeared on adverts, made an impact in the US with an appearance on the famous Tonight Show with veteran host Johnny Carson (he was told to not let Emu go near the host...he ignored it).

His home life was settled too – he’d wed Cher in 1978 and the couple would go on to have three children together.

His success had made him a millionaire.

In 1986, he appeared at Prince William’s fourth birthday party after receiving an invitation from Princess Diana – but as he entertained the future King, a perfect storm of problems lay just around the corner.

It was the same year he and Cher invested £275,000 by purchasing Restoration House in Rochester – a sprawling, 32-bedroom, Grade I-listed Elizabethan mansion which Charles Dickens is said to have used for the inspiration for Satis House – home of Miss Havisham in Great Expectations.

Its grandeur was matched by its need of significant funds to fully restore. For 18 months, the couple sank more than £500,000 into bringing it back to life. Yet their plans would be derailed in remarkable style.

In 1988, at the height of their financial commitment to Restoration House, the plug on his ITV show, Emu’s World, was pulled – and with it the financial carpet from beneath his feet.

Having spent so much on his home he suddenly found himself without a significant income in a period of soaring interest rates. It prompted the property market to nosedive and despite efforts to sell Restoration House there were no takers.

His financial situation spiralled – and was not helped by being hit with a £650,000 bill for unpaid tax.

By 1994 he was declared bankrupt and Restoration House repossessed. To rub salt in his wound, Cher decided to return to her native Australia – taking their children with her.

As work dried up, Rod reflected that many of his friends deserted him too. “The phone just went quiet,” he would later recall on one of the many chatshow appearances he would make where the only topic of conversation was his financial and career collapse.

His daughter would later reflect on the Channel 4 documentary Rod Hull: A Bird in the Hand: “He was broken. You could see the sadness in his eyes.”

Having hit rock bottom, a friend put him in touch with the National Trust who allowed him to live in a dilapidated bungalow near Winchelsea, just over the border in East Sussex.

“It really was derelict,” Debbie said of Shepherd’s Cottage. “It was hard to think he was really going to live there.”

But live there he did, maintaining the property as part of his £20 a week rent.

Added his former agent Laurie Mansfield: “One of his greatest frustrations was that Emu was the cause of his success and that in later years was the reason he wasn’t able to extend his talent the way he wanted. People only wanted Emu.”

He would make the occasional public appearance with his puppet to earn a bit of money. But he had come to accept things would never be the same again.

His daughter Debbie explaining: “He was kinder, more patient and contented.”

His son Oliver returned in his late teens to live with his father. “He was,” he said of his father, “happy.”

And, of course, he was with him on the fateful night on March 17, 1999.

Rod Hull’s life was one of extremes; of rags to riches to rags again. The laughter he sparked with Emu’s antics unforgettable for a generation.