A 78-year-old British "narcograndad" is being held in Colombia for attempting to smuggle cocaine out of the country as the country deals with a surge in pensioners being used to traffic drugs abroad.

Vincent Ruocco from Manchester was arrested at Bogotá’s El Dorado airport after the police found nine kilos of cocaine hidden in wooden pedicure files stashed in his luggage.

Colombian officials say the number of elderly people used as so-called “drug mules" nearly doubled in the last year. So far this year 47 people aged between 50 and 80 have been caught, with 14 of those over the age of 65. In 2018 33 were caught.

The numbers are likely to represent a fraction of the total number of elderly people used to smuggle drugs, many of whom go undetected.

“These people represent a vulnerable section of society,” Colonel Wilson Siza of Colombia’s Antinarcotics police told The Telegraph.