A CLITHEROE man who blew up a telephone box on Bonfire night with a home-made 'bomb' has been given 100 hours community service after a court heard it was a prank that went wrong.

Trevor Smith boasted to friends that he had made the device and asked if they wanted to watch it go off.

Friends suggested that he should detonate the bomb inside a greenhouse, but he decided against it, Preston Crown Court was told.

Smith, 22, of Hillside Drive, Clitheroe, was going to go with friends to Pendle Hill, but the conditions were too windy. Instead, he found a telephone box near the village of Newton.

The device caused more than £3,500-worth of damage to the box as the glass shattered, the door and roof blew off and the framework buckled. The back window of one of the cars they had travelled in to the remote area was also blown out in the explosion. Mr David Pickup, prosecuting, said Smith had been to a number of bonfires during the night of November 7. He took a gas-filled black bin liner from his car and put it in the kiosk.

He and his friends went to their cars to wait for the explosion which all but demolished the telephone box.

Smith, a mechanic, had gathered equipment from his work premises. "It was a prank that went wrong," said Mr Pickup.

Smith, who admitted criminal damage, said that he thought it would merely blacken the phone box.

Mr Richard Bennett, defending, said Smith had been encouraged by his friends.

He described him as a likeable but misguided young man.

Judge Peter Openshaw QC, sentenced Smith to 100 hours community service and ordered him to pay the full cost of the compensation.

He said the offence could be put down to 'youthful folly.'

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