A landlord who ‘forced’ a man out of his flat asked him to shoot a video of the property for new tenants – but it wasn’t quite what they expected.

Sandy Batchelor, a Scottish actor, did as he was told. He shot a short film and then posted it to Twitter. The two-and-a-half minute video shows the flat as a seemingly damp, broken, and odoriferous dump that took years effort from the current tenants to transform. 

But the video has certainly helped get the place seen, as the clip has been viewed more than 5,000,000 times and counting. Sandy wrote: ‘Our letting agent asked us to make a video of the flat we are basically being forced out of. I wish them the very best of luck.’

The video begins with a test shot of Sandy’s feet, as he says: ‘Right welcome to the virtual viewing of our flat, this is the living room, all this is coming with us because the flat comes unfurnished.

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‘There’s the bins just outside the living room window, that’s lovely in the summer when it’s hot’.

The camera whizzes around the room focusing on various focal points, with Sandy saying: ‘Ant bait station, because there’s ants… That fire place doesn’t work.

‘There’s some shelves. The boy who put them in must have been drunk when he did it because there’s about a 30 degree angle on them.’

Sandy begins to move through the house, beginning with the kitchen, past a sign on the door reading: ‘Don’t rent this flat!’ 

He continues: ‘Electric hob and oven that’s complete p***

‘Washer/dryer. Although not really a dryer unless you want your clothes still wet and smelling a bit funny.

‘These shelves are ours, they’re coming with us and I think the boy who did the living room did the kitchen as well as he only did f****** half of it.

‘Extractor fan, when you put it on you can’t hear yourself f****** think.’

Before leaving to go into the garden, he focuses on the kitchen door, where he says he got trapped about six months ago and, rather than fix the door or the handle, the decision was made to simply remove the locking mechanism.

We next get a peak into the bathroom where there is another sign this time reading: ‘You will hate it here!’

After a quick tour around the room, he zooms in on to the extractor fan.

‘When we first moved in, this extractor fan wasn’t working and I had to take a video of it, not working, before the landlady would send somebody round to fix it,’ he says.

Outside in the garden Sandy pans the camera to show his green-fingered skills before saying with a sigh: ‘It was an absolute hellhole when we arrived and we’ve completely renovated it. 

‘These plants are all ours, we’ll be digging them up before we go – place will end up looking like the Somme.’

Panning the camera to a black, temporary structure along the garden perimeter, he says: ‘Marvel at this feat of engineering, three separate fences, all p***.’ 

A quick jump cut and it is on to an animal trap.

He said: ‘This is a rat box, because there is a terrible rat problem – not that it matters – you could feed them plutonium, the little bastards will keep coming back.’

Sandy walks into the bedroom and, demonstrating keen awareness of our times, a final sign reads ‘I am a free, I am not man, a number’, before he points the camera at a ‘damp problem’ on the ceiling.

Finally we see a wardrobe mirror and our hero is at last revealed resplendent in sunglasses, a black bra and matching underwear.

Since it was posted yesterday afternoon it has been retweeted more than 70,000 times and liked by more than 300,000 accounts.

Playwright Dan Rebellato shared the video saying: ‘This is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen and I include King Lear in that.’

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