Ananova:

An eccentric known as The Mole Man has been banned from his home after digging a 60ft network of tunnels beneath it.

William Lyttle, 75, spent 40 years burrowing under his 20-room house, removing 100 cubic metres of earth with a spade and pulleys.

It is now feared the street could give way, reports the Daily Mirror.

Philip Wilman, a surveyor for Hackney Council, told Thames magistrates: "There has been movement in the ground. He's fortunate a London bus is not in his front garden. It's liable to lead to catastrophe."

Ex-electrical engineer Lyttle is staying in a £25-a-night hotel, paid for by the council, after an injunction under the London Building Act which allows the £100,000 repairs to be done.

Work at the house in De Beauvoir, East London, could include flooding the tunnels - big enough to stand up in and dropping to a depth of eight metres -with cement.