A TEENAGER was splashed with petrol and set alight by a friend in an "incident of folly", a court heard yesterday.

Neil Ivin, 31, sprayed petrol over Jonathan Ingleby's clothes as he filled a lawn-mower in a friend's kitchen, saying "Oops, sorry".

When he produced a cigarette lighter, flicking it five or six times, Mr Ingleby became nervous and decided to go home, said Paul Newcombe, prosecuting.

As they passed in a doorway, Ivin - who admitted to having earlier taken drugs - flicked the lighter again and this time the clothing burst into flames.

Mr Ingleby ran into the garden screaming as the flames went through his flesh. Ivin tried to beat out the flames as the householder's son doused Mr Ingleby in water, Teesside Crown Court heard.

Despite his injuries at the house in Firth Moor, Darlington, he cycled home where his parents called an ambulance and the police, said Mr Newcombe.

The teenager was rushed to Darlington Memorial Hospital with 16 per cent burns to his chest, torso, groin, and the front of his legs. Emergency surgery and later skin grafting left him permanently scarred.

Witnesses described Ivin's behaviour as unnaturally animated. He finally admitted he had taken a wrap of Amphetamine about 12 hours earlier.

Philip Crayton defending said that it was an incident of folly rather than malice. Ivin who regarded Ingleby as a good friend bitterly regretted it and had given up drugs.

Ivin, of Aysgarth Road, Darlington, admitted inflicting grievous bodily harm on September 23 last year.

Jailing him for two years, Judge Peter Fox told him: "It must have been a terrifying experience for him, as well as an extremely painful one.

"It is plain you were not intending to cause him serious injury. Your criminal liability lies in your deliberate use of petrol and your actual foreseeing some injury to your friend, but it was not an act of malice in the sense that people ordinarily use the word.