TV comic Justin Lee Collins ‘forced girlfriend to reveal every past sexual encounter’

COMEDIAN and television presenter Justin Lee Collins made his girlfriend recount every sexual experience she ever had for a notebook he kept as part of a campaign of domestic abuse, a court has heard.

The 38-year-old also made Anna Larke sleep facing him, the jury heard, rousing and criticising the video-games PR worker if he awoke and found she had turned away from him.

The performer assaulted and harassed his girlfriend during their nine-month relationship last year, prosecutor Peter Shaw told St Albans Crown Court.

The jury of nine women and three men heard that Collins, who came to fame with Channel 4’s The Friday Night Project, made Ms Larke, 38, close her e-mail, Facebook and Twitter accounts after reading her

messages.

The comic, who also appeared in West End musical Rock of Ages, made her throw away her DVD collection “on the basis she found some of the male actors in the movies to be attractive”, it is alleged.

Ms Larke also told police that the comic “has a problem with people of colour”, and the jury heard a recording of him accusing her of infidelities with men from ethnic minorities.

They met while Collins was still married. Ms Larke helped him move from Bristol to Kew, south-west London, in January last year before she moved in with him.

Collins “exhibited a desire to restrict” his girlfriend’s activities during their relationship, controlling, verbally abusing and physically assaulting her, Mr Shaw said.

“Significantly, Mr Collins resorted to compiling a dossier in the form of a Pukka Pad notebook. The purpose of the notebook was to list every sexual experience with every one of Ms Larke’s previous lovers or partners. He would ask her questions and then write it down,” he said.

“She felt it was a disgusting thing to have to do and she was worried that she would lose him by doing it.”

The court was played a tape recording Ms Larke made of a row between the pair at their home after they visited a pub in July last year.

Collins accused her of “fancying” a younger man at the pub who was with his partner. It is claimed they saw him hugging his partner and afterwards Ms Larke said she wanted to be embraced the same way.

Clips were played in which Collins is heard shouting: “You f***** up at the pub. When you’re f****** with me, you look at the f****** ground, you look at a tree, you look at a bench, you look at any f****** inanimate object. You do not look at any other f****** human being, you slag. Do you understand?”

In the recording, Collins accuses Ms Larke of being “very promiscuous” and having had 50 lovers.

At one point he says she had unprotected sex “on a train with different ethnicities, blacks and f****** and chinks”.

Collins, who sat at the dock sporting his trademark beard and long hair, denies harassing his ex-partner.

He listened as Mr Shaw added that he threatened to “put her in hospital unless she shut up” and after once becoming jealous of a previous lover, smacked her between her legs with an open hand. Recovering alcoholic Ms Larke tried to help the defendant get anger-management therapy and sent him a link to a domestic violence course, Mr Shaw said.

On a trip to Miami in March last year, Collins grabbed his partner’s hair and pulled her to the floor, pinning her down and spitting in her face, the barrister said. The trial continues.