The man, who prefers not to be named, said he was asleep upstairs at about 6pm on Tuesday (12) after a night shift,when he was woken by his stepson who had been outside working in the garage, to say there was a 'strange' man in the kitchen.

"I went downstairs. He was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a bottle of wine he had taken from the fridge and I asked him what he was doing.

"He said 'Nothing', so I threw him out."

The door had been left unlocked but with the key in it and it seems the man, who later turned out to have absconded from the Peter Hodgkinson Centre at Lincoln just let himself in, and kept the key, which he later dropped.

Whilst in the house, he searched through the kitchen drawers and the fridge.

Police said the man was arrested about an hour later at Newtoft and had been returned to Lincoln.

A spokeswoman said: "It is important people always lock their doors, even when they are just out in the garden or garage. A sneak-in burglary is just as possible in the countryside as it is in the town."