Meanwhile management at the highly-regarded Shajan Indian restaurant in Clayton-le-Dale, Lancashire are suing a diner who ate at the restaurant with a group of seven others, inserted a dead shrew into a vegetable curry served to him and then posted a complaint, with a photograph of the dead rodent, on Facebook, claiming it was a dead mouse.

Hygiene inspectors were called in and they confirmed that the dead shrew had been killed in a mousetrap been placed in the dish and had not been cooked with it. Inspectors also found no evidence of rodent activity at the restaurant.

It is not known yet whether the complainant or any of the group he was with has any familial or commercial links with competitors of Shajan, as is so often the case on social media.