Remember years ago when you bought a box of cereal and sometimes you would win a prize like a small toy or something? Well I think Aldi are now doing the same thing with their bags of broccoli, and it looks like one man in Birmingham is a winner.

Neville Linton, 63, doesn’t see it that way though. He picked up the stem of broccoli from the supermarket in Stourbridge, West Midlands, a month ago, and left it in the fridge for three days.

When Neville was ready to eat the broccoli, he took it out the fridge, unwrapped it, and was horrified to find the tiny ladder snake still alive and nestled in his vegetable.

Neville told Metro:

‘I’m not good with snakes.

It’s lucky I didn’t just leave the broccoli out in the kitchen, or it would have been loose in the house.

That would have been a huge risk for us because we have two vulnerable people living here.’

Ladder snakes, which are mostly found around Spain and Portugal, are not venomous, so I’m not sure it would have been quite the tragedy that Neville is imagining, but they have been known to nip at humans.

Neville and his sister Ann-Marie put the snake in a tupperware and drove back to Aldi where they presented it to a confused shop assistant. The snake was taken to Dudley Zoo, where an expert identified the species.

Aldi have offered Neville compensation, but apparently the sum isn’t enough for him as he argues the reptile posed considerable risk to his disabled on and vulnerable mum:

‘It’s just not good enough – the implications for us if it had got out in the house are huge.

Plus, I’m phobic of snakes so there’s the emotional impact of that too.’

I guess he’s waiting on Aldi to fork out £10 million in cash or something? Good luck with that. Come on Neville, you’ve sold the story the press and it was hardly an anaconda, was it? Take a voucher and move on.

FWIW, a spokesperson for Aldi said:

‘Our supplier has never had a complaint of this nature and has robust processes in place to prevent such issues occurring. We are investigating this isolated incident and have apologised to Mr Linton that our usual high standards were not met.’

For the north Yorkshire mum who was left ‘crying and shaking’ by the speed of an Aldi cashier, click HERE. Traumatic stuff.