A giant rat is one of the biggest caught by an Egremont vermin control expert this year - even longer than an 19-inch rat recently claimed to be the UK's largest.

Ian Sharples, of Brisco Mount, caught the 21-inch creature at an Abbeytown farm while working for his Rats No More extermination company.

Surprised by the size of the rat, which weighs nearly 19 ounces, he took it home to measure and discovered it was bigger than a rat featured in last month's Daily Star as Britain's largest.

"We seen it mentioned in the paper about a 19-inch rat and the first thing we said was we've had bigger than that, we're going to start measuring these," said Ian.

"Within in a week we've caught bigger rats, this one is a daddy rat. We nearly left it because we were coming away but the dogs marked again and out it came. It must have been the daddy of the lot but it didn't get 5ft.

"In the Daily Star, he said his dog had killed 200 rats in 18 months but we've had 200 rats in a night before."

Ian is against using poison due to the effect it can have on other animals, which might eat a toxic rat - especially as he feeds the rats to his ferrets.

"I started telling people I'd do it for them about 12 months ago but I've been doing it all my life. We use dogs to turn them out and then the ones that get wary I put traps down.

And Ian believes his massive rat isn't even the biggest he's ever caught.

He said: "I think even this year we've had bigger than that."