A North-East motorist pulled a pistol on a lorry driver during a terrifying road rage incident.

Lewis Lamb calmly pulled the fire arm from from its case and pointed it at a lorry driver as the pair of them drove up the busy M1.

And yesterday he was jailed for ten months by a court.

Lamb, 30, brandished the weapon at a lorry driver in, what was described in court as, "a moment of madness".

Lamb, who works as an airline steward and lives in Weardale Street, Spennymoor, County Durham, became involved in an exchange of words with the lorry driver after overtaking his lorry and a coach,St Albans Crown Court was told.

He appeared for sentence before a judge having already been convicted last month of possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence.

The prosecution described how Lamb was heading south on the M1 last September in his car.

During the trip he was held up in slow-moving traffic near the Luton Airport turn off on the Hertfordshire-Bedfordshire border.

Lamb, who had a 4.5 mm pellet firing air pistol with him, got involved in an exchange of words with the lorry driver.

The court was told that, in a fit of temper, Lamb pointed his finger at the lorry driver, who laughed. He then turned and grabbed the pistol from its case and waved it out of the window.

The lorry driver again laughed at him and Lamb drove off at high speed down the hard shoulder.

However, the lorry driver noted down his registration number and reported him to police.

Claire Rabaiotti, defending, said that although Lamb had denied the charge, he now accepted what he had done.

It was, she added a "moment of sheer madness" which had cost him his job and left him unable to pursue his plans of becoming a commercial airline pilot.

Passing sentence, Judge Seddon Cripps said that waving the weapon about on a busy motorway was a serious matter which could have caused panic to break out.