A shopping centre security officer said “restraining and getting” TV presenter Holly Willoughby was his “ultimate fantasy for way too long”, a court has heard.

Gavin Plumb, who is alleged to have developed an obsession with the star over a number of years, is accused of telling others online that “fantasy isn’t enough anymore. I want the real thing.”

Chelmsford Crown Court was told the 37-year-old had boasted of his previous convictions and jail time for false imprisonment and attempted kidnap in order to “bolster his credibility”.

Prosecutors allege that his past convictions – including tying a 16-year-old girl’s hands behind her back with rope and tape, and the attempted kidnap of women on a train with the threat of a gun – showed he knew “what it would take to terrify and overpower a woman”.

Ms Willoughby has waived her right to anonymity in connection with an accusation against Plumb of assisting or encouraging rape.

(Image: PA)

Alleged victims of sex offences or targets of sex offence conspiracies have a right to automatic anonymity for life from the moment an allegation is made by them or anyone else.

Jurors were told Plumb had unwittingly hatched “graphic” plans to kidnap, rape and murder Ms Willoughby with an undercover police officer from the US.

The plans allegedly involved attempting to “ambush” the presenter at her family home, and he is accused of discussing taking time off work in order to work on the plot.

The court heard that Plumb had accumulated “many hundreds” of images of Ms Willoughby which he had accessed online, and his “obsessive behaviour extended to other celebrities and to women who lived in his local area”.

Jurors were also told he had shared “deepfake pornography images of Holly Willoughby” online with a person called Marc, which were “highly sexualised”.

Prosecutor Alison Morgan KC said Plumb told Marc: “Restraining and getting her has been my ultimate fantasy for way too long.

“I’m now at the point that fantasy isn’t enough any more. I want the real thing.”

Plumb is charged with soliciting a man, David Nelson, to commit murder, and encouraging or assisting kidnap and rape.

The defendant is alleged to have conspired online with the man he knew as Mr Nelson, who was to travel to the UK from the US, and created a “detailed plan” to carry out the offences.

Ms Morgan told the court that Plumb had purchased items such as metal cable ties which would “assist him in carrying out the attack”.

She said the defendant “commented on the appearance of women in a degrading manner”.

In her opening remarks to the jury on Monday, she said: “In October 2023, this defendant, Gavin Plumb, engaged in an online discussion with a person he believed to be called David Nelson.

“In that discussion, the defendant explained his plans to kidnap, rape and murder the celebrity Holly Willoughby.

“The defendant set out his plans and sought to encourage the other person to commit those offences with him.

“The defendant’s plans as to what he would do to Holly Willoughby were graphic and were obviously sexually motivated.

“They were real to him, members of the jury, and were based on an obsession with Holly Willoughby that had developed over a number of years.”

Outlining how Plumb came to be arrested, Ms Morgan said: “What the defendant did not know then was that the person that he was communicating with online was an undercover police officer based in the USA and not, in fact, a like-minded abductor.

“The defendant’s planning of the offences was then interrupted and he was arrested by the police.

“The prosecution’s case is that the online discussions that this defendant had revealed his real intentions to carry out a plot to kidnap Holly Willoughby from her family home, to take her to a location where she would be raped repeatedly, before the defendant then intended to kill her.

“It was not just the ramblings of a fantasist.

“The defendant had carefully planned what he would do and how he would do it, purchasing items that would assist him in carrying out that attack.”

Ms Morgan added: “It’s likely in this trial he will say this is all just fantasy.

“You will consider, is this the talk of a fantasist or is this someone who expresses himself with such dark depravity that it is clear that he meant what he said?”

Ms Willoughby, 43, announced in October last year that she was stepping down from This Morning after 14 years on the ITV show.

She said in a social media post at the time that she felt “I have to make this decision for me and my family”.

The presenter has since hosted Dancing On Ice 2024 and will present a Netflix show, to be released next year, in which adventurer Bear Grylls hunts down celebrities in the jungle.

Plumb, of Harlow, Essex, denies all the charges.

The trial, which is expected to last for two weeks, continues.