A handout made available by the British West Yorkshire Police on March 4, 2013 shows a still from a surveillance camera showing a man wearing a batman costume bringing a wanted man (right) to a Bradford police station, in Bradford, north west England on 25 February 2013. -EPA/WEST YORKSHIRE POLICE

LONDON: A takeaway delivery man revealed Tuesday that he is the mysterious crime-fighter whose image went viral online after he walked into a British police station dressed as Batman and handed over a wanted man.

Stan Worby, 39, said he was "gobsmacked" by worldwide coverage of his antics and revealed that the man he turned into police was a friend.

Worby sparked a wave of theories about his identity on Monday when police released a CCTV image of a man dressed as the comic book hero, delivering the suspect to a police station in Bradford, northern England.

He had told dumbstruck officers: "I've caught this one for you!" before vanishing into the night on the early hours of February 25.

Danny Frayne, 27, has been charged with handling stolen goods and fraud-related offences and will appear in court on Friday.

Worby, who works for a Chinese takeaway, said his friend had wanted to hand himself in. "Obviously it was done as a joke," Worby told ITV television.

Worby said he took offence at media reports describing him as a chubby version of the "caped crusader" - protesting that he looks overweight in the picture because he was wearing a tracksuit under the costume to stay warm.

"I've got my full tracksuit underneath," he explained. "I'm not just wearing this - it's too thin."

Worby said he had been at a football match in London on February 24 - wearing the Batman outfit - when Frayne called to ask if he could give him a lift to the police station.

"I told him as soon as I was home I would run him to Bradford central police station," Worby told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

"Danny's a good friend of mine and I've known him for 15 years or so. Who knows if I'll be doing some more crime-fighting in the future?"

Neighbourhood police in the Buttershaw area of Bradford revealed details of the mystery on their Facebook page and the incident was captured on CCTV.

Worby is not the first man to pose as a real-life Batman.

In October, a man pleaded not guilty to obstructing US police while dressed as Batman, after he refused to leave them alone while they searched for a driver who had fled the scene of an accident.

Mark Wayne Williams had already been sentenced to six months' probation after police received a report of a man dressed as Batman on the roof of a business in Michigan.-AFP

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