A middle-aged man has had a lucky escape after a chip pan fire threatened to turn his flat into an inferno.

The man, in his fifties, left the pan on the hob at his flat in Christchurch Road, Southend, while he watched television on Tuesday.

When he returned to the kitchen at around 7.30pm, the man found the room full of smoke and flames.

He then closed the door behind him and called the emergency services.

On arrival, firefighters in breathing apparatus from Southend fire station took around ten minutes putting out the fire, which had caused extensive damage to the kitchen and filled the ground floor flat with soot and smoke.

Leading firefighter Lee Dawson<OK> said the blaze could have caused even more serious damage if it had spread to adjoining rooms.

He said: "We went into the flat and found the kitchen quite badly damaged by the fire.

"The cupboards were totally burned and all of the ceiling and the top three feet of the walls and cupboards had been completely melted by the heat of the blaze."

Mr Dawson said the incident served as a warning to people who used deep fat friers in their homes.