A WIRRAL man has denied tabloid newspaper claims that he runs polar bear safaris for wealthy hunters.

Ex-policeman Robert "Bob" Glynn, 52, says a report in a Sunday newspaper that he offered rich businessmen the chance to shoot the endangered bears in Canada was the result of "a stitch up".

And despite saying his hunting trips website "is probably the most popular in the world", Mr Glynn, from Wallasey, said he had never sent anyone on an overseas safari in the four years he has been in business.

The News of the World claimed on Sunday that he had offered an undercover reporter the chance to hunt polar bears on specially arranged trips to Canada.

The paper quoted him saying: "I've got lots of shoots and I can do anything you want. You want a polar bear, I can do a polar bear."

But on Tuesday he told the Globe: "It's a total stitch up. A woman rang me saying she had £20,000 to spend on a safari trip for her husband.

"It sounded a bit dodgy but I thought, it's for her husband so maybe she doesn't really know very much about safari.

"She asked what sort of game was available and I've probably said something off the cuff like You can even get polar bear these days', or something like that."

He added: "I don't advertise polar bear hunts and never have, but it's true you can hunt them. The Inuits (Eskimo people) have special licences to kill them when they come too close to their towns, and even then it's only after the bears have wandered too near a number of times.

"The locals see it as a way of making money. The bears would be killed anyway."

On his website - www.shooting.sh - Glynn offers hunters the chance to hunt pheasant, red deer and wild boar here in the UK and France.

He also offers "Big Game Hunting in Tanzania", where hunters get the chance to kill "buffalo, lion, leopard, elephant, hippo and many other species under a government licensed scheme".

Tanzania is probably Africa's premier safari destination," says the website. "You can relax in luxury while experiencing the East African Bush."

The website explains that hunters have to pay fees for each "trophy" kill they notch up.

Prices appear to vary from country to country but in Tanzania, they would pay $4,000 to kill an elephant, $2,000 for a lion or a leopard, $840 for a hippopotamus and $70 a time for porcupines.

The website adds: "Historically, the finest lions are from Rungwa, with our camp being the leader in quality lions and plains game."

For a hunting trip to Northern Zimbabwe, a picture of a leopard is used to illustrate the page, while on a section for "large game in Russia" there is a picture of a brown bear lying dead, splayed across a wooden cross with a gun-bearing hunter crouching alongside.

Mr Glynn - who was given a police gallantry award in 1980 for saving a woman's life at the Pier Head in Liverpool - says all the safaris are legitimate.

But a spokesman for the League of Cruel Sports told the Globe: "It beggars belief that anyone can be so callous as to think it is perfectly acceptable to make money from the slaughter of wild animals."