A man laughed after he told passers-by he had doused a former family friend in petrol and turned him into a human fireball, a court heard.

Jobless Mark Towell, 26, denies murdering 49-year-old Arthur Leak just weeks after Mr Leak tried to get into bed with his common-law wife's daughter.

Towell, who had been having an on-off relationship with the daughter, considered that to be the actions of a "nonce" - a slang word for pervert - and the jury was told that was behind the incident, last September.

Newcastle Crown Court heard yesterday how the victim, a care assistant, suffered 80 per cent burns in the incident and when he was found in a back alley he looked like "a scene from a horror film''.

Towell had been lodging with the victim and his common-law wife, Ann Young, in Hylton Street, Gateshead, for about three years and had developed the on-off relationship with Mrs Young's daughter Nichola, a mother of two.

Despite falling out over the bedroom incident, the men went drinking together in the town after Mr Leak had bought a second-hand car with £500 he borrowed from a lender called Tommy the Tick man.

The two visited pubs and had an empty petrol can with them which they filled at a garage on the way home.

Paul Sloan QC, prosecuting, told the jury the two men were walking home when the attack happened in a back alley behind Sunderland Road, in Felling.

Mr Sloan said: ''He was laughing and he said to the group of friends 'I've done it. I have killed a nonce'."

Towell was arrested early the next morning at Gateshead's Queen Elizabeth Hospital where he was receiving treatment to burns on his arms and legs.

He denies murder and the trial, expected to last three weeks, continues