IT wasn’t me.

That is what the man accused of stabbing a dad to death at a Southampton house party has told a court.

Tony Wilkinson was giving evidence at Winchester Crown Court after being charged with murdering Neil Hampson, known as Bones, at Havre Towers in Weston in the early hours of November 3, 2007.

A jury heard how Wilkinson was on the run from police at the time of the stabbing after being convicted of attacking a man with a mace and slashing another man across the face with a Stanley knife in Bournemouth.

Wilkinson said that he and Mr Hampson had been taking drugs in the kitchen minutes before a fight broke out between the pair.

Wilkinson, 28, a dad-of-two, of Merrow Avenue, Poole, told Winchester Crown Court: “Neil was going ‘oh you did that like a real man’.

He was mocking me. I just laughed it off. He said ‘I don’t know what you are laughing at. I will punch your head in’. I didn’t take it seriously.”

Wilkinson claimed that he then walked to the toilet, where he smoked some crack cocaine before hearing a fight start outside.

He said: “I heard banging against the walls and glass breaking. Something was kicking off. I was stumbled on by Bones and he turned his aggression on me. He started punching me and I punched him back.

“I was aware of the blood when he was on top of me. It was on my face and all over me.”

Wilkinson said someone pulled Mr Hampson away from him before he fell into the bedroom and grabbed two Gurkha-style kitchen knives that he had hidden in the room several days earlier.

He said: “My instant reaction was to get the knives. I would have used them if he came at me again.

“I said ‘get the hell away from me. if he comes near me again I will cut him. I will kill him’.”

Wilkinson ran out of the flat and admitted threatening two men outside on the street with the knives. The knives have never been found.

Under cross-examination by Oba Nsugbe QC, Wilkinson admitted that he resorted to using weapons quickly and that he had a fascination with them.

Wilkinson denied murdering Mr Hampson and said that he “didn’t know for certain”

who had stabbed him at the flat.

Mr Hampson, 32, of Magnolia Road, Merry Oak, had joined about 20 other guests at the flat in International Way after celebrating the 21st birthday of Danielle Gibbon on November 3.

Following the stabbing he was taken to Southampton General Hospital, where he died of multiple stab wounds.

Proceeding.