A SERIAL stalker who threatened to mutilate TV vet Trude Mostue was jailed for ten years yesterday.

The star of BBC's Vets In Practice was so worried by the chilling calls made by John Maynard she feared she could become another stalker victim, like the late Jill Dando.

The star was one of five women across the North targeted by the 55-year-old welder with a series of obscene and sickening calls threatening graphic sexual violence.

Yesterday, Teesside Crown Court heard that psychiatrists attributed Maynard's 30-year campaign of terror against women to a deep-seated hatred of his overbearing mother.

The court heard that bespectacled Maynard, from Portland Street, Gillygate, York, had a series of convictions dating back to the 1970s, when he was found guilty of making obscene phone calls.

Between 1982 and 1995, when he was working in Germany, he was jailed five times for using threatening behaviour. During the 1990s, he was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for making threats to kill.

He was released in 1999 and almost immediately began his campaign of terror, making violently explicit calls to his victims.

Prosecutor Christine Egerton told the court that Ms Mostue "genuinely fears the possibility of some violence towards her".

Maynard rang Ms Mostue's Bristol practice last year claiming to be a friend, then spoke to her colleague Maria Lowe, threatening to harm the TV star.

Ms Mostue herself took a call from him a month later in which he threatened her with extreme sexual violence. He was finally arrested in October of the same year when he was caught on a CCTV video making a phone call from a public box in King Square, York.

Maynard pleaded guilty in February at Teesside Crown Court to five charges of harassing Ms Mostue and four other women. Among them was Paula Metcalfe, of Sherburn, Durham City, who received the same sickening threats as the TV star.

He asked for three more offences of making obscene calls, to be considered.

Psychiatrist Dr Bob Johnson, who has treated some of Britain's most disturbed prisoners, said that Maynard's offending sprang from suppressed anger at his mother, now in her 80s.

Richard Bloomfield, defending, said that Maynard would be a continued threat if he were jailed and not given treatment.

He said Maynard's mother had been "possessive and overbearing" as he grew up, making it unable for him to establish relationships with the opposite sex.

Mr Bloomfield added: "Unless something in done now then the risk to women in the future will remain."

Recorder David Robson QC said: "My primary duty in not just to punish you for what you have done but to protect the public."

He was not persuaded that psychiatric treatment stood "any particular chance of success".