Brave pensioner Albert Jones dashed to the rescue when his next-door neighbour fell asleep and set fire to her flat.

Albert, 81, of Barton Road flats, Headington, was watching TV when he heard screams coming from the corridor outside his door. He found 85-year-old Olive Chamberlain yelling that her flat was on fire.

It is thought Mrs Chamberlain moved her chair nearer her electric bar fire to keep warm, but dozed off and the cushion on her lap slipped on to the fire.

Albert, a former auxiliary fireman, ran into the flat and smothered the flames with a wet tablecloth.

The former youth hostel warden said: "When I went into the flat, the flames were three or four feet high, but I managed to put the fire out by smothering it and stepping on it.

"I was a little scared, but my first thoughts were to put the fire out and then call the fire brigade. I used to be in the Auxiliary Fire Service during the war, so I knew what to do." But Albert said he was no hero: "It was simply survival of the fittest. I had my own flat to think about and all the other flats in the block. They could all have gone up if I hadn't done something."

Mrs Chamberlain was taken to the casualty department of the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford with minor burns to her right hand.

A hospital spokesman said she was in a "comfortable" condition but was being transferred to the Churchill Hospital, where she would remain until she was well enough to return to her flat.

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