It's not every day you splash out more than £30 million on a Scottish Premier League football club.

And in the case of an estate agent many miles from the border, it’s not any day.

But that has not stopped it becoming mistakenly embroiled in a take-over bid for one of the UK’s most successful teams.

Puzzled staff at Andrew Ellis Estates in Dartford, Kent, thought their boss had netted a fortune when they picked up the first phone call asking about their proposed £33 million bid for Rangers FC.

But, after dozens of calls and emails from sports journalists and die-hard fans, they realised they had been caught in a major mix-up.

The Lowfield Street office was flooded with enquiries after reports a property tycoon named Andrew Ellis was tabling a bid for the Scottish giants.

Co-director Toby Ellis said his beleaguered team-mates had received calls from several Scottish newspapers and television stations as well as English national newspapers, including the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.

He said: "It started with someone calling and asking for Mr Ellis and whether I wanted to pass comment on my bid for Rangers. Then there were more calls, asking for pictures and comments. We had about three from the same paper - they didn’t believe us when we put them straight."

Mr Ellis, who is a Chelsea fan and no relation to the man lining up the multi-million pound take-over, thinks the mix-up may have come from search engine Google, where his firm comes as the second result in a search for key words "Andrew Ellis".

Even fans from Rangers’ fierce Glasgow rivals, Celtic, have been having their say, despite staff doing their best to blow the whistle on the confusion.

Mr Ellis’ co-director, and a Tottenham Hotspur fan, Gino Cinganelli, said: "I’ve taken four or five phone calls. At first it was fun. I thought, 'Great, we’re buying a football club,’ but now it’s getting a bit annoying. We don’t have £30 million to splash around.

"No-one here has any links to Rangers. The office is actually Celtic green."

The closest the business has got to buying a football club is a proposed shirt sponsorship deal with an amateur outfit in Medway.

The real Andrew Ellis has so far refused to talk about his involvement with Rangers.

The club, which is £31 million in debt, says it has opened discussions with interested parties, including the property developer, who owns Guernsey-based vehicle company RFC Holdings, but added they are at an early stage.

Mr Ellis is a former director of Queens Park Rangers Football Club, and had previously made a bid to take control of the London club in 2001 before withdrawing the offer.

The following year his consortium paid £500,000 to buy League One club Northampton Town and he took over as chairman but quit the role soon after.