When Leo McNeil spotted dancer Susannah Welch across a crowded room at the college where both were students, it was love at first sight, a court heard.

But when his love was not reciprocated McNeil, aged 22, turned from admirer to stalker, Harrogate magistrates were told.

Prosecutor Peter Scott said McNeil bombarded Miss Welch for nearly a year with phone calls, letters and tapes both of music and of his own voice making sexual suggestions.

He waited for her where she worked and made unexpected visits to her home, getting in on one occasion while no-one was there and leaving a picture of himself with a cuddly toy in her bedroom.

Mr Scott said McNeil, of Franklin Mount, Harrogate, and Miss Welch were both at Harrogate College. When she did not return his feelings he stepped up his harassment and even arrest and caution did not stop him before on August 19 he walked into her home through open patio doors.

Her boyfriend, Steve Brennan, tried to stop McNeil getting upstairs to her bedroom where a terrified Miss Welch was naked after taking a bath. Mr Brennan was attacked by McNeil who grabbed him round the neck and had to use a steel bar to ward him off, splitting his head open with it.

McNeil pleaded guilty to harassing Miss Welch and assaulting her boyfriend and was put on probation for nine months.

Presiding magistrate John Carter also made a restraining order to prevent McNeil making any contact with Miss Welch or Mr Brennan and banning him from going near her home in Crag Lane, Knaresborough.

Rodney Noon, mitigating, said McNeil had never used or threatened violence towards Miss Welch.

He had fallen in love with her when he saw her across a crowded room at the college.

She was already involved with another man but tried to be kind to McNeil so that the messages he got were confused and this served to compound the problem.