A naked man had to be rescued from a ledge after he was forced out of his bedroom window by flames.

Most of the 15 residents of the block of flats in South Terrace, Littlehampton, had fled by the time firefighters arrived to deal with a bathroom fire.

But the owner of the flat where the fire was raging sat on a window ledge being urged to jump on to a sofa.

Matthew Duckworth, 27, and his brother James, 22, live on the fifth floor of the Victorian terraced building.

James said: "We saw all this smoke gushing out of the window and then we heard the bloke downstairs screaming.

"I said to my brother, 'Get some trousers on,' and we ran down the darkened hall, banging on all the doors on the way down. Then we grabbed a fire extinguisher and kicked down his door."

The fire extinguisher didn't work, however, so they left the building.

Outside, they saw a man sitting naked on the windowsill of his ground floor flat and refusing to jump the 6ft down to safety.

The brothers tried to get an old sofa across to help him down but were unsuccessful. The man was finally saved by the fire brigade and taken to hospital after breathing in smoke.

Matthew, a property marketing fitter, said: "I'm not blowing my own trumpet but if James hadn't seen the smoke, and if we hadn't knocked on those doors, it could have been a very different story."

Assistant Divisional Officer Barraclough of West Sussex Fire Brigade said the cause of the fire was being investigated.