Heinz Kessel, 39, dashed into the store in Bochum and relieved himself before realising the lavatory wasn't connected to the drains. Furious staff gave him a cleaning bill and a lifetime ban from the shop.

Shop assistant Simone Fiedler, 32, said: "I was talking to another customer when I suddenly realised there was a terrible smell in the shop.I called the manager and we went around the shop looking for it and then behind a screen where we had some toilets on display there was this red-faced man trying to flush a display toilet. He thought it was hooked up to the mains and couldn't understand why it wasn't working.He apologised and told us what had happened but in the end we had to shut the shop until it was all cleaned up because the smell was so bad customers would have been driven away anyway."

However he now eats for free at the local Tandoori...

The staff had heard that the public toilets had been closed...

The original was here