UK pensioner new knife-wielding Crocodile Dundee

LONDON - With Australian outback hero Crocodile Dundee as her inspiration, an 80-year-old British pensioner foiled a knife-wielding burglar with an even bigger blade of her own.

When woken by a masked man holding a knife, Winifred Whelan screamed and ran downstairs to the kitchen.

Grabbing a giant carving knife, she told the startled intruder "You call that a knife? This is a knife!" in an echo of the famous scene in the Crocodile Dundee film when actor Paul Hogan confronted a New York mugger.

As she took on the intruder, her husband grappled with his accomplice.

Recalling the incident on the day the burglars were jailed for the break-in, Whelan told the Liverpool Echo: "I said to the robber 'You call that a knife?' His was around 10 inches long and I had a carving knife measuring around 14 inches.

"I pointed it at his belly and added 'This is a knife!"'

- REUTERS