A STUDENT went berserk and attacked a female friend hours after learning he had made it on to a prestigious TV quiz show.

Undergraduate Mark Philip Davies, 21, had just won a place on the BBC's University Challenge, when he became embroiled in a row with a friend that ended when he put his hands around her throat and threatened to kill her.

Yesterday, Davies pleaded guilty to assault at Consett Magistrates' Court, County Durham.

The court heard how Davies, a final year computer science student, overheard his friend, Anna Louise Lock, talking about him and confronted her.

The bench was told the assault followed a nervous breakdown. Davies, of Wrexham, had been diagnosed with depression in 2002.

His grandmother, to whom he was very close, had died in October last year and his girlfriend of three years had moved out three days before the attack.

The day after his girlfriend left, Miss Lock had removed technician's knives from his room, after he threatened to kill himself.

Davies claimed he had little recollection of the attack but remembered checking himself into Durham's County Hospital.

Magistrates imposed a conditional discharge.

Davies is hoping to be back in Durham in September to re-take his final year.

No one from Durham University was available to comment.