A DOCTOR who set up a secret camera in his bathroom to take pictures of a woman, accidently took footage of children, a court was told yesterday .

Video enthusiast Dr Peter Finklestone, 39, who restored old episodes of Dr Who for the BBC, transferred his hidden camera footage of the woman on to a master tape, which he kept for his own amusement.

Newcastle Magistrates' Court was told yesterday that Finklestone had recorded young girls who used the bathroom at his house, in the Gosforth area of Newcastle.

He initially recorded the children by mistake, aiming to take more pictures of a female friend, who he had become obsessed with. But the court was told he kept all the images.

Since his arrest, Finklestone has resigned from his post at the Gosforth Memorial Medical Centre, is to lose his home and has been axed by the BBC.

At a previous hearing, he pleaded guilty to nine counts of making indecent images of the woman and children between November 1998 and October last year. Yesterday, he was given an 18-month community rehabilitation order.

Frazer McDermott, in mitigation, said bachelor Finklestone had never been in trouble with the law in the past.

He said: "The girls were filmed innocently at the outset because the camera had been set up to film this woman.

"But Mr Finklestone kept them and he knows he should not have done that.

"Nothing on the tapes recovered by the police showed the children involved in any form of sexual activity whatsoever."

Finklestone was also told he must remain on the sex offenders register for five years.