A WOMAN partygoer gouged a man's eye while her husband punched him in the head, a court was told yesterday.

Anne-Marie Stobbs,36, and her husband Steven,37, were at a neighbours' New Year's Eve party in Yarm with their children when trouble broke out.

Prosecutor Anthony Dunne said that Steven Stobbs got into a scuffle with the host Martin Morrison who told him to leave. When he was still there half-an-hour later another guest Ted Moir, 56, asked him to go.

Mr Moir told Teesside Crown Court that Mrs Stobbs ran at him, knocking him to the ground, and then began gouging his left eye with her thumb or a finger. He alleged that Mr Stobbs punched him in the head about ten times.

Mr Moir told the jury: "I thought I had lost an eye for a moment.

"I could not see out of my left eye and there was blood everywhere. I was in shock and a couple of friends took me home."

Mr Moir who had drunk eight pints of beer went to see his doctor who referred him to James Cook University College Hospital, Middlesbrough.

Cross-examined by defence lawyers he denied that he was the aggressor that night and that the Stobbs acted in self-defence.

The couple of Rudby Close, Yarm, both plead not guilty to actual bodily harm assault.

The trial continues.