TWO ex-convicts who plotted to cause explosions are today beginning a total of 14 years in jail.

Former Morecambe pier wild west show performer John Baker, 59, was jailed for 10 years. His co-defendant, Phillip Benson, 39, of Every Street, Nelson, received a four-year sentence. Both have already served custodial terms for arson.

Sentencing the pair at Burnley Crown Court, Judge Raymond Bennett told Baker a psychiatric report stated he was 'perfectly normal.' He said his behaviour echoed the kind of thing he was involved in during 1994, when he was jailed for arson using an incendiary device.

The judge said Baker, who had working guns, literature about bomb-making and anarchy at his home, seemed to lack any kind of appreciation of how such things would, in the minds of right thinking people, cause grave anxiety about his intentions.

He went on: "These are serious cases. The alarming thing is you don't seem to think they are serious." Judge Bennett said Benson had written to his co-defendant 'clamouring' for him to make him a bomb and spoke of hatred towards certain people.

He told the defendant: "It is a very serious matter to be involved with bombs and to encourage their manufacture and even more serious to take one on public transport, where it may have gone off at any time."

The judge added Benson's greatest mitigation had been that he had decided to get rid of the bomb instead of abandoning it where it may have been found by innocent passers by or children. Baker, of Clark Street, Morecambe and Benson both admitted conspiracy to cause explosions last summer.

Baker also pleaded guilty to having explosive substances, two charges of possessing a firearm, three of possessing a firearm when prohibited, two allegations of possessing expanding ammunition and making a threat to kill.

The court had earlier been told how police raiding Baker's home found gunpowder, chemicals, fuses, a commercial detonator and large quantities of ammunition.