A NORTH-EAST motorist pulled a pistol on a lorry driver during a terrifying road rage incident, a court heard yesterday.

Lewis Lamb calmly pulled the weapon from its case and pointed it at a lorry driver as the pair drove their vehicles up the busy M1.

Yesterday, he was jailed for ten months after a judge said the incident could have caused panic.

Lamb, 30, brandished the weapon at the lorry driver in what was described in court as "a moment of madness".

Lamb, an airline steward, of Weardale Street, Spennymoor, County Durham, became involved in an exchange of words with the man after overtaking his lorry and a coach, St Albans Crown Court was told.

He appeared for sentence before a judge having already been convicted last month of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.

The prosecution described how Lamb was heading south on the M1 last September in his car.

During the trip, he was held up in slow-moving traffic near the Luton Airport turn-off, close to the border of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire.

Lamb, who had a 4.5 mm pellet firing air pistol with him, got involved in an exchange of words with the lorry driver.

The court was told that, in a fit of temper, he pointed his finger at the lorry driver, who laughed. He then turned and grabbed the pistol from its case and waved it out of the window.

The lorry driver again laughed at him and Lamb drove off at high speed down the hard shoulder.

However, the lorry driver noted down his registration number and reported him to police.

Claire Rabaiotti, defending, said that although Lamb had denied the charge, he now accepted what he had done.

It was, she said, a "moment of sheer madness" that had cost him his job and left him unable to pursue his plans of becoming a commercial airline pilot.

Passing sentence, Judge Seddon Cripps said that waving the weapon about on a busy motorway was a serious matter that could have caused panic to break out.