A Liberal Democrat election stunt has backfired after the party upset a near century-old business.

As part of their campaign against Conservative social care plans – dubbed a “dementia tax” by opponents – the Liberal Democrats created a spoof “May & Co” estate agents.

But the party’s bid to draw attention to the Tory proposals – which involve including the value of a person’s home when calculating their care funding – suffered a setback when they were made aware of a real-life May & Co.

John Yianni, the owner of the London estate agent, revealed he was alerted to his firm’s fake namesake when he began receiving “weird” phone calls and the company’s Twitter account “started hotting up”.

Speaking to Sky News, Mr Yianni described how people began asking “why are you getting involved with the Lib Dems?”, adding: “It’s not a nice thing to happen to you, especially when you get stupid people ringing you up.

“We have been around since 1920s – before the Lib Dems.”