A POOLE estate agent’s office has been inundated with towels after becoming a collection point for an appeal to help clean oiled guillemots.

Within days more than 100 towels of all sizes and colours had been delivered to Scott Baines Estate Agents in Dorchester Road, Oakdale.

“The good people of Oakdale are all using it as a good excuse to clear out their airing cupboards,” said administrator Sue Russell.

“Some of the towels are better than the ones I have at home!”

She said: “It was amazing. We had little old ladies saying they had an email from a friend, people registered with us, neighbours down the road, all coming in with bags of towels.”

The great towel deluge began after the RSPCA appealed on a local radio station for towels to help clean the hundreds of guillemots and other seabirds washed ashore covered in a mystery oily substance, now thought to be an oil additive used in lubricating oils to improve performance.

Sue along with manager Ian Taylor and senior negotiator Sarah Oliver put up posters and emailed clients and were delighted with the response.

However, the radio station has already delivered their 2,000 towels and so Sarah is taking them to the West Hatch RSPCA centre where the rescued birds are being cleaned.

Any towels that arrive afterwards will be donated to the RSPCA.