André Messager, a 56-year-old physical therapist, had just got off his motorbike when he slipped and fell down a manhole whose cover had been dislodged by rain that deluged the region last week.

The retired navy diver was swept off his feet and dragged along the tunnel by a "raging torrent" of rainwater, the newspaper Nice Matin reported yesterday.

His first reaction was to pull his motorbike helmet back on and secure the straps, he told the paper. Then he "lay back, with my hands crossed on my stomach, as if I was on a water slide in an amusement park, and let myself go".

Bruised and scratched, he washed up against an iron grating on the beach of the luxurious Majestic hotel, to be found by a council worker who was unblocking storm drains.