Kevin Little loved to travel and also had a taste for fast food.
That’s why he went to China to become an English teacher but that’s also where he, unfortunately, passed away just a day after his 39th birthday.
It took his family nine grueling weeks to bring his body back home and only managed to hold the wake. To pay tribute to Kevin’s love of fast food, Jess Bawn, 25, the partner of Kevin’s older brother Adam, 36, decided to have a ‘Ken’s Fried Chicken’-themed cake made.
Watch the video of the KFC themed cake below.
[rumble video_id=v5p9h5 domain_id=u7nb2]
Video credit: Rumble
The cake, which was made by Selina McCloud, took three days to finish. It features nuggets, fillets, fries, drumsticks, and a burger, and look quite convincing despite being made of rice krispies and crushed cornflakes.
Jess, from Portsmouth, said: “It was a very silly idea, but that’s just who Kevin was – we asked to add 21 cupcakes with chicken and chips on top as a ‘21 cake salute’ to Kevin’s life.
“When we saw the finished cake, we were absolutely in awe!”
Kevin decided to settle in Nanton, a province of Jiangsu, China, in 2008 where he found work as an English teacher. Apparently, he was a local celebrity and even managed to save three people from a house fire after firefighters refused to go in believing that it was too risky.
His family thinks his death may be due to epilepsy but are waiting for the results of a second autopsy that was performed in the UK.
Adam, a warehouse manager, said: “Kevin would have loved the cake and would have told everyone that they wouldn’t like it, then he’d taken it away to eat it all himself.
“He was a hero in China and people recognized him while he walked down the street – he was invited to dinner almost every night because he was so well-known.
“He loved fast food, and would eat anything but the cake was something different to what he would have potentially been eating in China but he did love takeaways from a chicken shop.
“When we got the cake I thought ‘that’s not a cake, that’s actual food that they’re trying to pass off as a cake and surely it won’t taste that good.’
“Jess had to reassure me that it was a cake and it did taste amazing, it just looked so realistic.
“Everyone in the wake had a laugh at the cake because of how real it looked and the children there were telling us they didn’t want them because they had real chips on – it was absolutely out of this world.”
It wasn’t easy bringing Kevin’s body home. Aside from the nine weeks it took to fly his body back to Portsmouth, issues with several procedures, language barriers, and money issues added another two-week delay.
Fortunately, the family received help in raising enough money to bring Kevin back, including a charity called REST (Repatriation Services Trust).
Adam added: “Kevin was outgoing, fun and a proper gentleman who would always help people out – he lived life big and his dreams were bigger.
“His funeral was more of a celebration of life and we all laughed a lot about the amazing cake that was made for him.”
Selina McCloud, from Tiers of Joy in Gosport, had been making realistic-looking cakes for some time now.
She said: “I love seeing people’s faces when they come to pick up their cakes.
“When Jess and Adam came to pick the cake up, they stood for about half an hour admiring how it looked and it was something special for their family member’s send-off.”
Replaced!