A family received an unwelcome visitor at dinner that left them "humiliated, appalled and physically sick".

John Loveday, and his wife Kathryn, of Prospect Road, Woodford Green, were having a Saturday night in with their daughter, Helen, 29, and her boyfriend, Sam Shahin, 30.

They ordered a takeaway from Temple Indian Fusion, in Snakes Lane West, which arrived ’45 minutes late, but as Mr Loveday said: "That wasn’t the problem."

Mr Shahin opened the rice box where they found what was initially thought to be a curry leaf, but was in fact a cockroach. 

Mr Loveday, 70, said: "I’ve worked in boiler houses before but I have never seen a cockroach this big, it was easily an inch-and-a-half long.

"From my experience they like damp, dirty places and there are usually hundreds of them."

When the family complained, the manager came round with the delivery driver and requested to have the cockroach back “to show to the chef”.

The incident has been reported to Trading Standards.

Temple Indian Fusion when approached for comment confirmed that a manager had returned with the cockroach but that they receive health inspections "every three to four months."

For more on this story see Thurday's Wanstead & Woodford Guardian