Collins says ex-girlfriend told him to ‘dump her’
TELEVISION presenter Justin Lee Collins’s former girlfriend repeatedly told him to dump her, his trial for domestic and emotional abuse heard.
The 38-year-old said Anna Larke, whom he is accused of harassing, frequently phoned him repeating the “mantra”: “There are things you don’t know about me, there are things you don’t know about me, there are things you don’t know about, you need to dump me, you need to dump me.”
Collins is alleged to have made Ms Larke, a recovering alcoholic, write down all her previous sexual encounters, regardless of how graphic.
Yesterday, Collins, who shot to fame with Channel 4’s The Friday Night Project, said making the sex list was her idea as cathartic, therapeutic and to “unburden herself”.
St Albans Crown Court heard that Collins did not want to write the details down, but Ms Larke, a video games public relations worker, dictated them to him.
Sonia Woodley, QC, asked Collins: “Did it ever occur to you to ask her about boyfriends?” “No,” he answered. “Were you interested?” “No,” he replied. He added: “She told me she wanted me to write everything in the pad.
“She couldn’t bring herself to write it down herself and wanted me to do it. I felt that if she felt it was cathartic, therapeutic in some sense, for her to unburden and she wanted metowrite it down, however odd I felt it seemed, if it helped her, then fine.”
Collins said his ex-girlfriend was worried about telling him about a relationship she had with a man called “Charlie” who was famous and worked in the public domain.
The man’s surname was not divulged to the jury of nine women and three men.
Collins said she screamed the man’s name down the phone to him during a conversation in December 2010 when she was “almost incoherent”.
Collins, of Kew, southwest London, d e ni e s harassment.
He and Ms Larke, also 38, lived together from January to July last year in a deeply troubled relationship as she tried to overcome alcoholism, the court has heard.
The trial continues.