The Tibetan spiritual leader kicked off his eight-day trip in Manchester, northwest England, and is also due to visit the northern city of Leeds, the Scottish capital Edinburgh, and London.

He will address thousands of young people at an event in Manchester on Saturday, delivering a message about the need to foster peace and dialogue.

Brand, who has previously battled drug addiction, will be compering the event, entitled "Stand Up and Be The Change".

On Friday, the Dalai Lama will attend an international business convention in Leeds to talk about ethics in commerce.

The BBC reported that the event prompted China to threaten to pull its athletes out of an Olympics training camp in Leeds where some 220 Chinese athletes, coaches and staff are due to be staying from early July.

The Dalai Lama brushed off the threat.

"That is always happening, that is almost like routine," he said in Manchester.

He said he was "very happy once more" to be in England and spoke of his "close relations" with the country where he wants to use his tour to promote tolerance and forgiveness.

The trip comes only a month after the 76-year-old Buddhist leader's visit to London to collect the �1.1 million ($1.7 million, 1.4 million euro) Templeton Prize, which he said he would donate to charity.

During that visit the Nobel Peace Laureate met British Prime Minister David Cameron, sparking anger from China, whose top legislator Wu Bangguo cancelled a visit to Britain in protest.

The Tibetan leader, who fled his homeland for India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule, announced last year that he was giving up his political role to focus on spiritual duties.

Despite his calls for autonomy rather than independence for Tibet, Beijing has repeatedly accused him of trying to split Tibet from the rest of China and has stepped up pressure on world leaders not to meet him.

The middle-aged man self-immolated in front of a Chinese military compound in Qinghai province's Huangnan Tibetan autonomous prefecture, the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said.

Security officers put out the flames within minutes, said the India-based group, which gave the man's name as Tamding Thar and described him as a former nomad.

Another group, the London-based Free Tibet, said he died at the scene and up to 500 people protested to demand the return of his body, which authorities later released to his family. It gave his name as Tamdrinthar.

In a brief dispatch, China's official Xinhua news agency confirmed a person died of self-immolation in the province on Friday, but gave no details as to the victim's identity or gender.

Authorities were investigating the incident, the report said.

Free Tibet said the act "was a clear and absolute rejection of Chinese rule: he set fire to himself at a location that represents to Tibetans the brutality of China's occupation."

The government of Jianzha county -- where the incident took place -- refused to comment on the case while calls to local police went unanswered.

Since March last year, at least 38 people have set themselves on fire in Tibetan-inhabited areas of China in protest at repressive government policies, according to activists.

On May 27, two Tibetan men set themselves alight in front of the Jokhang temple, a renowned centre for Buddhist pilgrimage in the centre of Lhasa -- the capital of the Tibet region.

It was the first such incident to hit the city. Travel agents in Lhasa said last week Chinese authorities had closed Tibet to foreign visitors.

Tibetans have long chafed under China's rule over the vast Tibetan plateau, saying that Beijing has curbed religious freedoms and their culture is being eroded by an influx of Han Chinese, the country's main ethnic group.

Beijing, however, says that Tibetans enjoy religious freedom and have benefited from improved living standards brought on by China's economic expansion.