Lottery jackpot winner Errol Active has been jailed for a "vicious and prolonged" assault on a former girlfriend.

Bradford magistrates heard how 39-year-old Active - the district's first big National Lottery winner, who won almost £1 million - repeatedly punched Ann Fisher in the face and head during an attack at the home they shared in the city.

Active, of Yew Tree Close, Shipley, pleaded guilty to common assault and was jailed for three months.

Michael Wriggles-worth, prosecuting, said that Active and Miss Fisher went out separately one night last December. Miss Fisher returned home and began watching television in the bedroom.

When Active returned about an hour later she noticed he had been drinking. He picked an argument with her and then without provocation punched her on the side of the head with his clenched fist, the court was told.

He then threw her on to the bed and "really laid into her", said Mr Wrigglesworth. Each time she tried to get up he threw her back on the bed. The attack lasted about ten minutes.

Miss Fisher, who suffered bruising to both eyes and grazes to her face and neck, eventually escaped by climbing through a window.

Active was arrested later that morning and told police he had had ten bottles of alcohol and could not remember a lot.

Defence solicitor Phillip Ainge said that winning £985,000 on the Lottery five years ago had changed Active's life overnight.

Since then, he had tried to settle down but had gone from one relationship to another and each had ended in recrimination and bitterness, he said. Relationships, both business and emotional, had generally been short as people were simply after his money, he told the court.

"He has very few friends who have stayed with him throughout and not asked for their piece of the action," said Mr Ainge.

On the night of the offence both he and his girlfriend had been drinking.

Some unkind things were said to him during the argument and it was not an unprovoked incident, said Mr Ainge.

Jailing Active for three months, magistrate John Doyle told him: "This was a vicious and prolonged assault. You appear to have shown little remorse."

Active struck the jackpot in February 1995 when he used his last £3 to buy tickets after spending much of the day in a betting shop.

Then unemployed, he moved from West Bowling, Bradford, into a £175,000 four-bedroom house with a sauna and jacuzzi in Bingley, bought a Toyota sports car and a high-powered BMW and invested in a restaurant and a pub.

But he has had a succession of problems since his win.

He was cleared of assaulting a previous girlfriend after a trial at Bradford magistrates court in September 1996.

And the following January he narrowly escaped being jailed by Bingley magistrates when he appeared before them and admitted driving his BMW M3 while three times over the drink-drive limit, driving while disqualified and with no insurance.

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