A pensioner has found a novel use for an old red telephone box, turning it into a lavatory.

John Long, 73, spent months converting the cubicle into a loo after finding the disused box in a reclamation yard in Carhampton, Somerset.

The retiredsalesman, from Taunton, Somerset, fitted the telephone box with a porcelain lavatory pan, hand basin, high-level cistern, frosted glass panes, a heater and a red tennis ball on the end of the lavatory chain.

He said: ''I've done lots of projects, but this is one of the biggest. It's worked out extremely well - better than expected.

''I've wanted a red telephone box for years and I didn't have an outside lavatory, so I thought I could combine the two.

''To be honest, I probably use it more often than the internal lavatory now. It's just so convenient.''

Mr Long spent months transforming the telephone box and even crept out at night to measure another box down the road to check everything would fit.

''I took a pan to a red telephone kiosk down the road, sat on it, hoping and praying no one would come along and take me off to a nut house,'' he said.

''Because of the high-level cistern, the water comes down like an avalanche."

Despite their decline in numbers in recent years, the red telephone box regularly tops polls as one of Britain's most iconic structures.

The Post Office first introduced red phone boxes in the 1920s designed by Sir Gilbert Scott.

(Read by Renee Haines. Renee Haines is a journalist at the China Daily Web site.)

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(Agencies)