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A bare-chested prankster who tried to make a batch of rocket fuel in his mum's kitchen ended up with horrific burns after it exploded.

Dim-witted Chris Monger, 26, decided to try and create the volatile substance as a joke after seeing a recipe for it on YouTube.

The upper half of his body was scorched with flames when the mixture suddenly erupted into a fireball as he was making it in a saucepan.

Chris dropped to the floor in agony and rolled around to put out the flames - before running outside where his mother hosed him down with water.

He suffered serious burns to his stomach, back, arms, face and hands and spent five days swathed in bandages in hospital.

Dad-of-two Chris, who is now back home in Bradwell, Norfolk, said: "It is most stupid thing that I have ever done.

"I only tried to make this stuff so I could set it off in the garden and create lots of white smoke for a laugh - but it all went horribly wrong.

"I could easily have been blinded and I consider myself very lucky that my injuries were not far more serious.

"I just want it to be a lesson to people not to mess around with fire because the same thing could happen to them.

"People should take care when they try and copy things they see on YouTube. I will not be doing it again."

(Image: East Anglia News)

Chris decided to try and create the 'rocket fuel' last week after seeing instructions about how to make it using common household ingredients.

He said: "The results on YouTube looked pretty impressive so I decided to give it a go and I made about four batches in an old saucepan without any problem.

"I was in the kitchen with my mum and sister eating strawberries and going back and forth to the stove.

"I was caramelising the mixture into a paste and I'd left it pulled off the hob slightly, but there was one edge that was still on and it got red hot.

"When I went to put it back on and stir it one last time, the bottom fell off the saucepan and the mixture hit the hob.

"That's when it went bang. It lit instantly and blew up in my face. My mum screamed and I just dropped to the floor and rolled around to put out the flames."

He was taken to the James Paget Hospital in Great Yarmouth before being transferred to a specialist burns unit in Chelmsford, Essex.

Chris said: "It did not seem to hurt at first, but then the paramedics put a special cream on my burns in the ambulance and I was in agony.

"My neighbours who are five doors down could hear me screaming in the back of the ambulance - but within five or ten minutes it felt a lot of better."

Doctors later told him that he second degree burns to 12 per cent burns of his body.

He was also told that it was lucky he was not wearing a T shirt at the time as that could have caught fire and made his burns worse.

The accident also caused around Â£200 of damage to cupboards in his mother's new kitchen - and he will be footing the bill.