TELEVISION personality Selina Scott is backing a campaign to cut the amount of light pollution blighting the North-East's skies.

The former breakfast TV celebrity, who last month stepped into a row over a village pub's lights opposite her parents' home in Appleton-le-Moors, North Yorkshire, said she felt "incredibly strongly" about the spiralling scale of light pollution.

Ms Scott said: "There are so few areas now where you can go outside and see the magnificent array of stars, such as the wonderful Milky Way. In the North, in particular, it's getting more and more difficult.

"It's down to unthinking people. We should all try to make our voices heard about the level of light pollution because we are in danger of losing our quality of life."

Ms Scott wrote to the North York Moors National Park Authority planning department complaining about the intrusion of lighting from the Moors Inn pub into the home of her parents, Charles and Betty Scott. The couple say the lights shine into their home and stop them sleeping.

Last night, she spoke out in support of the Night Blight! campaign by The Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE).

The CPRE has published images taken at night using US Air Force weather satellites to reveal how light pollution into the night sky has increased by 42 per cent in the North-East and 21 per cent in North Yorkshire over seven years.

Countryside campaigners and local astronomers believe the region's starry nights are gradually becoming obliterated by the increasing orange glow from street lamps, security lighting, and floodlights.

Nic Best, CPRE's regional policy officer for the North-East, said: "Star-filled nights are one of the things that make our countryside so special."

Campaigners are not arguing for lights to be switched off, merely for them to be better directed, so they do not light up the night sky.

Martin Lunn, curator of astronomy at the Yorkshire Museum in York, said: "I understand people want security lighting but since when do burglars come from Mars?

"If we carry on as we are, we will look at a map of Britain in a generation's time and it will just be an orange glow."

The CPRE is campaigning for light pollution to be taken seriously and wants the Government to develop policies to ensure it does not get any worse.