A shock discovery of four guns hidden in donation bags gave a Slough charity shop manager an unexpected start to his day last week.

Sue Ryder shop manager Jason Tushingham said: “I came early in the morning and started going through the donations. I picked up one of the bags and looked inside and there were four guns. One was a pistol and another looked like a full sized AK47. There was also anther gun and what looked like a machine gun.

“It was the full-sized ones that really shocked me.

“I didn’t really know what to do so I called 101. The lady on the phone said, ‘oh dear I’m not too sure what to do about this one so leave the guns alone and we will send somebody to look at them’.”

He said armed police turned up at the High Street shop, which is just at the end of the row by Wilkinson.

He said they had asked him to step outside the back room where the donation bags are kept, so they could check them.

It turned out that two of the guns were toys – designed to look exactly like a real AK47.

But the other two were real airguns – legal to have in the UK without a licence but illegal to carry around in public without a reasonable excuse. They are classified as firearms if used in a robbery.

Mr Tushingham said that the armed officers gave the shop the green-light to flog off the guns. But as the shop mainly sells donated furniture, clothes and homeware - it ‘wasn’t an option’ and the officers took the guns away instead.

Mr Tushingham said it’s not the strangest donation the he’s had the pleasure of unveiling.

He said: “It’s never been guns; it is usually adult toys actually – you have to wear rubber gloves for those – but we can’t sell them either.”