A MILKMAN who pushed a home-made bomb through the letterbox of his former lover's home as part of a vendetta 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 - just frighten her.

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

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

He went to her home in Park Lane, Darlington, at about 2am on June 27, 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.

The device was made from a metal pipe, which was sealed at both ends, filled with explosives from either a firework or shotgun cartridge, and had a fuse attached to allow Tinkler time to flee the blast.

Debris from the bomb, which destroyed the letterbox, shot across the street and part of it landed inside the house, along with some of the explosives that did not go off.

Mr Bennett said: "It would have posed a real danger to anyone in the vicinity, either inside or outside the property. Had all the propellant recovered from the property ignited, the explosion would have been far greater."

Robin Turton, defending, said that the offence should be treated more like an arson than a terrorism matter, but the judge said a degree of planning had gone into making the bomb.

"This was a rather more deliberate device than petrol in a milk bottle," said the judge. "Someone has gone to a great deal of trouble making it."

Mr Turton said: "One of the downsides to the Internet and modern technology is that knowledge for this kind of thing is far more accessible, regrettably."

He said Tinkler was suffering from feelings of helplessness and frustration, "which showed itself in this appalling manner".

Tinkler, formerly of Starmer Crescent, Darlington, was captured on a closed-circuit television camera that 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.

The judge said: "Great danger could have been caused to anyone close to that bomb.

"It did explode, it caused damage to 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."

Mr Turton urged Judge Armstrong to limit the sentence because of Tinkler's guilty plea and for the remorse he had shown.

He 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 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 and a computer monitor.