An airport passenger has been detained for five days after he told officers he had a bomb hidden in his rectum - because he was frustrated with the time it was taking to get through security.

He didn’t have a bomb, but the comments prompted a security alert and partial evacuation at Beijing’s international airport. The man was arrested at the scene.

In a hurry to make his flight, the unnamed man had made a number of vocal complaints about the slow progress of security checks, Beijing city government’s news website reported.

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He had also shown signs of anxiety while queuing at the checkpoint, it said.

When he was asked to remove his shoes before passing through security screening, he told an officer: “Do I need to drop my pants as well? I have a bomb in my a**.”

The guard then asked him to repeat what he said, and he obliged, the report said.

After the area was cleared, the man was searched and taken to the local police station, where he has been held since the incident on Monday.

Authorities said the security lockdown severely disrupted the operation of the airport, which isn’t a great sign for the man - China’s Supreme Court last year ruled that perpetrators of bomb hoaxes should be jailed for at least five years if the disruption caused an economic loss of more than £50,000, The South China Morning Post reports.

Earlier this month, a 25-year-old man was jailed for three years after he made a fake claim that there was a bomb at Chongqing airport, while a doctor from Beijing was jailed for six months in January for calling a security hot line to falsely report there was a bomb on a flight.