A man who shoved a home-made explosive through the letterbox of his former lover's home has been jailed for six years.

Judge Peter Armstrong told John Tinkler: "Anyone making a bomb and placing it at someone's house can only expect to be dealt with in an extremely serious way."

Tinkler, 45, told police he had not meant to hurt ex-girlfriend Danielle Douglas, but just frighten her.

Teesside Crown Court heard today how he launched a campaign of threats and damage after their on-off relationship finally came to an end in August last year.

Prosecutor Richard Bennett said Tinkler smashed up Miss Douglas's car after going to her workplace and threatened to have her family "done in".

On June 27 this year, he went to her home in Park Lane, Darlington, at around 2am and put the home-made pipe bomb through the letterbox. Mr Bennett said the explosion caused damage to the hallway, woke neighbours, and set car alarms off.

Tinkler, formerly of Starmer Crescent, Darlington, was captured on a closed circuit television camera which had been set up after he started harassing Miss Douglas, who was at home with her two children and another youngster at the time of the explosion.

Judge Armstrong said: "Great danger could have been caused to anyone close to that bomb.

"It did explode, it caused damage the door, and only by good luck was no-one injured, either seriously or at all, but the effect on the family in that house must have been terrifying."

Robin Turton, defending, urged Judge Armstrong to limit the sentence because of Tinkler's guilty plea and for the remorse he has shown.

Mr Turton described the attack as "an outrageously stupid and foolish act" but said Tinkler had got caught up in "a whirlpool of acrimony from which he just didn't have the good sense or lateral thinking to pull himself out".

Following the attack, Tinkler moved to Derbyshire to start a new life and landed a job as a milkman. References from his employer and a friend were handed to the court.

Tinkler admitted unlawfully and maliciously causing an explosion likely to endanger life or cause serious injury. He was jailed for five years.

He received an additional one-year sentence after he admitted three charges of handling stolen goods - an N-reg Ford Scorpio, a Kawasaki motorbike worth £4,000 and a £500 computer monitor.

The vehicles and the monitor were found when police raided his former home in Darlington on November 3 last year following a tip-off.

The car had been stolen in August, the motorbike from outside a house in Marske, east Cleveland, in March, and the computer monitor from a delivery van Tinkler had been driving.