AT the age of 77, Gordon Billingham has proved that you are never too old to have teething troubles.

The pensioner was shocked to discover that the cause of serious breathing problems was a tooth which had been lodged in his lung, probably for several years.

The great-grandfather of two, from Browning Place, in Crook, County Durham, was so short of breath, he was unable to walk more than a few metres.

When he later began coughing up blood, he feared the worst and that he was suffering from emphysema.

A scan at Bishop Auckland General Hospital revealed nothing, so he returned a few days later, when a miniature camera was used.

Mr Billingham, who has worn false teeth for some time, was amazed to see one of his old molars come up on the monitor.

"After the camera had gone down, the doctor said 'I can see what's causing it. It's a tooth.' He asked me if I had swallowed a tooth.

"Then he said he would bring it out with a long metal device. Well, I could hardly refuse - I had a big camera down my neck.

"I was watching the screen and I saw the tooth inside my lung, although I didn't know what it was at the time.

"I was flabbergasted. It might have been down there for years. From the colour of it, it's been down then since I was born."

It is thought that Mr Billingham, who worked at Black and Decker in Spennymoor, County Durham, for 30 years after serving eight years in the navy, must have inhaled the tooth.

He and his wife, Mary, have kept the offending article as a memento.

They thanked Dr Rashid Abbasi for his efforts and friendly nature, while their daughter, Dhesna, sent him a card and poem.

Mrs Billingham, also 77, said: "How long it was down there for, nobody knows. It must have been there for a long time.

"Nobody could believe it when we told them.

"Even the doctors were shocked. They said it was the first time they had ever taken a tooth out of somebody's lung."