It looked smaller on the website!

AS neighbours rushed to festoon their homes with festive lights and decorations, one resident found a way to tower above the rest.

But Matty James’s act of one-upmanship was not exactly deliberate. Mr James, 32, had ordered what he thought was an 8ft inflatable Father Christmas. What actually arrived was a 25ft santa. He discovered this fact when he inflated the £100 decoration that he had bought online as our picture shows, it’s big enough to block his living room and bedroom windows. Mr James, a nightclub owner who lives with his partner and their young son in southport, Merseyside, said: ‘I ordered it off eBay a month ago. I thought it would be about 8ft tall, then all of a sudden, once I started putting the air into it, it kept growing and growing. I did wonder if it was ever going to stop.

‘It took me and five neighbours to hold it down and stop it taking off – I was nearly flying across southport with it.’