A BUILDER who bared his backside at a neighbour "to free a trapped wasp" has avoided jail.

Andrew Ramage, 38, said the pest had flown up his T-shirt and that the only way to release it was to drop his pants.

But it meant he flashed at his neighbours, Ronald and Colette King.

Ramage was ordered by a judge to stay away from the neighbours after Teesside Crown Court heard he had blighted their lives for more than a year.

The builder admitted subjecting Mr and Mrs King, of Moorcock Row, Lingdale, east Cleveland, to a catalogue of abuse between May 2003 and July last year.

Pleading guilty to a charge of harassment at Teesside Crown Court, he admitted to having sworn at, waved his fist and bared his backside at his neighbours.

He threw a banana skin at their home, sprayed their car windscreen with a hose and used a tin to repeatedly strike a stone wall dividing the houses' gardens.

Rupert Doswell, prosecuting, said that when Ramage was arrested and interviewed, he accepted he had once exposed his backside to Mrs King.

David Lamb, in mitigation, said his client found the court proceedings distressing and that he intended to move.

He said: "The court can be confident that it has seen the last of Andrew Ramage."

Imposing a 100-hour community punishment order, Recorder Michael Slater told the court he had considered sending Ramage to prison.

He also imposed a restraining order, to begin today, which banned Ramage from communicating with Mr and Mrs King.

Speaking after the case, Mr King said: "We have been here 13 years and I thought I had found the perfect place to live until Mr Ramage moved in next door three years ago.

"Since then it has been absolute hell. I can't even begin to describe the trouble he has caused us."