A MAN from Iwerne Minster proved to be a real knight in shining armour as he helped extinguish a lorry on fire on a busy motorway.

Lee Knight, 43, was driving on the M3 near Fleet when he saw the lorry on fire, and pulled over to help put out the blaze with a fire extinguisher.

Mr Knight works for Wessex Fire and Security as a fire extinguisher manager and was driving in a work van full of equipment at the time.

Mr Knight said: “I was coming south along the M3 just before the Fleet turn off when I saw a skip lorry in front of me. One of the skips was on fire and smoke was pouring from it, but the driver hadn’t noticed.

“A car drove past and signalled to him and when he pulled over and saw the flames he got into a bit of a panic and started trying to get the skip off the back of the lorry.

“I had about a dozen full extinguishers in the back of the van, but we only needed three to put out the fire.

“I don’t know how the fire started but it might have been that someone had thrown a cigarette into it and it gradually ignited the material in the skip.”

The fire service was not called to the incident but one of the skips was badly damaged.