The mayor flushed out any misconceptions and tried to spark a chain reaction as he urged Londoners to waste less water when getting rid of their own waste.

"Red Ken" said it was all based on the old adage "if it's yellow, let it mellow" and advised gardeners to fill up a bucket and hurl it on the plants as the region around London suffers its worst drought for a century.

"If we continue to waste the amount of water that we do, London will run out of water," Livingstone, 61, told The Independent newspaper.

"A third of all the water you use you flush down the loo, and actually there is no earthly reason that you need to flush the loo if you have merely urinated. That's a huge saving of water.

"The experiment in my home, which is now into its second year, has been a success. We continued with it right through the summer and never once did a great bluebottle come into the bathroom.

"After all, why would a bluebottle wish to slurp up a little bit of nitrogenous waste? It has no nutritional value at all. It's just that people have a perception that their urine is some sort of liquid form of their excreta.

"A lot of gardeners put their urine in a bucket and actually use it. Plant roots love it."

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