Boss blasts back with Queen hits in cockerel row
A MULTI-MILLIONAIRE blasted out Queen hits to drown the sound of his neighbours’ crowing cockerel, a court heard yesterday.
The bird, owned by Helen Richardson and her partner Paula Holland, crowed 100 times a day and the noise from 80 yards away drove their neighbour into a fury, the court was told.
Businessman Neil Dymott, 56, shouted abuse and played loud music in retaliation, it was claimed.
“He was playing excessively ampedup music from his driveway,” Miss Richardson told Southampton magistrates. “Every time the cockerel would crow he would play the music. Every time the neighbour’s cockerel crowed he would say, ‘Shut that ******* cockerel up.’ Mostly it was Radio 2 and Queen music. I could hear it clearly – the music, the words – from inside the house.”
Despair
Mr Dymott allegedly called Miss Richardson a “sick witch” and threatened to sue because the noise affected his home’s value. During one row, he allegedly slammed her up against a fence leaving her with a cut arm.
He called Miss Richardson a “lezza” and mocked the couple by playing Percy Sledge’s 1966 hit When A Man Loves A Woman, the court heard.
Mr Dymott denies two charges of harassment.
Miss Richardson and Miss Holland, who kept chickens at their home in Marchwood, Hants, did their best to keep the cockerel, born in 2014, quiet. They soundproofed its home and moved it to the end of the garden.
It was finally silenced by an anticrowing collar, the court heard. But Mr Dymott continued to play loud music – mistaking other cockerels in the neighbourhood for his tormentor, it was alleged. The collar restricted the bird’s breathing and caused distress, so Miss Richardson removed it.
But the bird “went a bit mad,” crowed more than ever and attacked the two women when they stepped into the garden, the court heard. In despair, the couple asked friends to kill it in August 2015.
A second cockerel arrived weeks after the first one was killed, but died two months later.
“We think he was poisoned,” said Miss Richardson.
Claire Hook, prosecuting, said: “Ownership of a cockerel is completely legal and all parties live in a rural area. Hearing a cockerel would be part of normal countryside but these two victims took the brunt of Mr Dymott’s offence.”
The trial continues.