Forget comically shaped carrots or bizarrely formed bananas, one Bushey woman says she has found a parsnip that looks just like ET.

Linda Reid, of Coldharbour Lane, in Bushey, was wandering through the grocery aisles in Sainsbury's, on Monday, looking for a parsnip to accompany her husband's roast dinner.

She said: “I went to Sainsbury's on Monday at lunchtime.

“I was only looking for one parsnip because it is only my husband who likes them.”

As her hand hovered over the mound of parsnips, Linda's eye was taken by one particular vegetable – one with an uncanny resemblance to Hollywood's most famous homesick alien.

Indeed, such was the resemblance of the root vegetable to ET, Linda decided to phone the Watford Observer straight away.

She added: “He looked at me and I thought 'oh my goodness, I have to buy ET'.

“I said to the lady on the checkout 'I hope you don't mind if I take ET home?' She just laughed a lot.

“She told me I had to phone the paper and when my husband saw it he agreed with me that it looks like ET, so we phoned the paper.”

However, there was a sting in the tail for Linda's husband, Roland.

After getting her unusually shaped parsnip home, Linda decided she didn't have the heart to give the vegetable the chop.

So, when Roland returned home from work on Tuesday night ready for his evening roast dinner, it was minus one vital ingredient.

Linda added: “Unfortunately he is now having his roast dinner without his parsnip.

“I have had to open a tin of sweetcorn instead which doesn't quite live up to a roast parsnip does it? But how can you roast him?”