A MAN was left shocked when his bank informed him he was £51m in debt.

Bill Lindsay knew he had overspent on a weekend trip to Brighton, which left him in the red.

But he almost collapsed when a letter arrived from Northern Rock asking for the eight-figure sum.

When Mr Lindsay, 47, of Houghton-le-Spring, near Sunderland, rang the bank he dis- covered he was only £80 overdrawn.

He said: "When I opened the letter I thought, 'that's not right'. I was really quite shocked.

"I don't know how many other people have been sent letters like these. Who knows if there is some poor fellow with a weak heart who has thought 'how am I ever going to pay this back?'"

Unlike some letters issued by banks which bear a computer-generated signature for an un-named person, Mr Lindsay's letter was signed by hand.

A spokeswoman for Northern Rock said "silly human errors" can happen in a bank with more than one million savers.

But Mr Lindsay is furious the error was not questioned.

"You would have thought something of this magnitude would be checked," he said.