An Italian man has stumbled across a rather buxom pear in Sutton.

Kenneth Williams-style innuendo aside, Renato Bartolucci, 73, has a pear tree at the end of the garden which is producing incredibly voluptuous fruit.

Mr Bartolucci, who used to work in the hotel industry but has now retired, said he has never seen such a juicy pear as the 3lb one he saw recently.

He said: "I see these pears every year, so I'm largely unaffected by it. It was only when I had some friends round recently that they commented on the size of my pears."

"I used to grate them into my porridge, it was very nice."

As enormous pears are commonplace at his home on Gander Green Lane, Mr Bartolucci has been feeding a family of foxes with the full-bodied fruit, not knowing he may have given them a record breaker.

Mr Bartolucci's pear, which weighed in at 3lb, was devoured by the foxes, and the second biggest has weighed in at 2.5 lbs.

However, it could be still be a record breaker.

According to Gill Collins from the National Fruit Show, the winner of last year's biggest pear award was mere 1.98 lb.

Fruit expert at the Royal Horticultural Society, Jim Arbury, said it has been a particularly good year for pear growers.

He said: "Pears are particularly big this year as it it has been a long growing season. We had a mild start of the year, a warm spring, not a bad summer and what has so far been a warm winter."

"The hotter it is the better the cell division, which helps the size of the fruit."