At 7pm on Sunday, a message appeared on The Plough's account saying: "Happy Christmas everyone".

But that was followed by several messages claiming head chef Jim Knight had been sacked for asking for three days off this month, including the key Christmas Day shift.

The first read: "We’d like to inform you that we’ve just fired our head chef.

"Unfortunately he wanted to have a weekend off this month and Christmas Day this year for family commitments so we thought we'd sack him.

Some of the Twitter messages posted by the chef

"Yeah, a week before Christmas!

"We don't care that he has a 7½-month-old baby daughter."

It was followed by a derogatory comment about the source of the produce used by the pub.

The pub, Oxfordshire, UK, gained hundreds of new followers on Twitter as the controversial messages were retweeted more than 1,000 times each.

Christmas Day is traditionally one of the busiest times for pubs and restaurants, with customers paying a premium for food and staff generally earning higher wages.

A message posted on Mr Knight's own Twitter account read: "It's my daughter's first Christmas. I wouldn't miss that for ANYTHING.

"Thank you for the kind words. I had no idea this would escalate so quickly. See you in the job centre tomorrow. X"

It was followed by: "I would like to make it CRYSTAL CLEAR I have not "hacked" any account. I created the account with permission of my ex-employers. Night x."