Recycle plant workers found 100,000 Canadian dollars (£61,400) hidden inside a TV after a man appeared to forget he had stashed the cash inside the set more than 30 years earlier.

Employees at the plant cracked open the wooden frame of the worthless broken-down television set to find a huge mound of $CAD50 bills.

Police say they have since reunited the money with the 68-year-old man, but have not released his name over concerns for privacy, after tracing bank records from 1985.

“This is a unique situation where this large quantity of money was missing without anyone knowing it was missing,” said police officer Nicole Rodgers.

“He hadn’t even realised with the police officers sitting in his house that they were speaking of the cash box with his money in it.

“In his mind, he thought it was still somewhere else in his house.”

Workers at the Global Electric Electronic Processing plant in Barrie, in Ontario, Canada, found the stash on 13 January.

“It’s surprising how compact $CAD100,000 is in fifties,” said GEEP’s vice president of operations, Lew Coffin.

Acording to the Ottawa Citizen, there was no requirement for the plant employees to turn over the money to police.