The 62-year-old claims he was told he had “banged” into another person while doing front crawl in the fast lane of the 25m pool, which is near his home in Surrey, in 2015.

He told the Daily Mail: “I was just swimming as normal in the pool, doing front crawl, and the lifeguard came up to me and said, ‘I think you banged into somebody’. I said, ‘it’s the fast lane you know, this is rubbish’.”

Mr Wilkie blamed the incident on an “over-zealous” lifeguard and said he decided to talk to a more senior member of staff before cancelling his membership.

Describing the situation as “ridiculous”, he added: “You go to the pool to swim not to have lifeguards telling you how to swim.”