Whitney Houston funeral will be broadcast live online by AP

The private funeral of the legendary singer Whitney Houston will be streamed live on the internet, it was announced yesterday.

The revelation will please Whitney Houston’s grieving fans, who were disappointed to learn that the star’s funeral would be a private affair.

There will also be no public memorial service for Whitney Houston.

Members of the public wishing to pay their respects to the iconic singer will be able to do so by following online as she is laid to rest.

The Associated Press has been granted the right to film the ceremony, which takes place on Saturday in Whitney Houston’s hometown of Newark, New Jersey.

The funeral will be streamed on the AP’s website, and will also be made available to broadcasters.

While the service at New Hope Baptist Church will be not be open to the public, that has not stopped Whitney Houston’s fans from bringing flowers as and other gifts as tributes to the singer.

The church, where Whitney Houston sang as a child, has become one of several sites where people have gathered to remember the singer since her death last Saturday night at the age of 48.

Whitney Houston is also being remembered by the New Jersey government, after governor Chris Christie ordered state buildings to lower their flags on the day of the funeral.

Whitney Houston decline from world-beating success into damaging drug addiction has been blamed by some on her turbulent marriage to singer Bobby Brown, and it has been reported that her family asked her ex-husband to stay away from her funeral.

However, Bobby Brown has insisted that those reports are false, and that he will attend the ceremony in order to support the couple’s 18-year-old daughter, Bobbi Kristina.

There is believed to have been disagreement among the Houston family as to where Whitney Houston should be buried.

Whitney Houston’s mother Cissy and her cousin Dionne Warwick are said to have argued that the iconic singer should be laid to rest in Atlanta, but other relatives who argued for Newark won the day.

Whitney Houston may be buried alongside her father, army serviceman and entertainment executive John Russell Houston Jr., who died in 2003.