AS hoaxes go, it really does take the biscuit.

The elaborate spoof which has caused some embarrassment at a Belgian newspaper named a stonemason and son of a donkey breeder from Abbotsbury as the true sculptor of the famed Elgin Marbles.

The Greek masterpiece which has been the subject of argument for centuries about where it should rest was actually made by itinerant worker Phil Davies, who went to Athens around AD453 and changed his name to Pheidias, according to a cult art website on the internet.

Historians were now considering changing the name of the sculptures to the Davies Marbles, it said.

The outrageous claims continued with a suggestion that the Parthenon, also made by Davies and marked with the words Made in England, should be brought back to Britain and rebuilt as part of 'a West Midlands shopping centre and multiplex cinema.'

The website story, which carried a rebuttal by 'Mrs Fredi Mercouri of the Greek ministry of culture', was taken quite literally by Belgian journalists who thought they had a scoop on their hands.

They failed to spot it was a bare-faced hoax and the story appeared in the De Morgen newspaper.

Red-faced newspaper bosses were later forced to apologise, much to the amusement of the man behind the hoax, Dr Tom Flynn, who runs the artnose.com website.

Dr Flynn said he was stunned by how easily the Belgians were taken in.

In the story he described how 'renowned Oxford archaeologist Dr Rex Tooms' made the discovery about Phil Davies from Abbotsbury during an archaeological dig on the outskirts of Athens.

Dr Flynn said: "A friend in Brussels read the article and rang me immediately.

"As he read it out I just laughed and laughed, my sides nearly split.

"I rang the paper but they have yet to get back to me.

"The poor Belgians."

The paper said that running the story was a 'stupid mistake.'