A PRACTICAL joke landed a student in court after he installed a hidden camera in a communal shower room in his Southampton halls of residence.

Prankster Matthew Lamble got the idea after watching stunts on the television show Jackass, city magistrates were told.

Lamble installed the camera with the help of a friend while carrying out maintenance work in the shower block before term started.

Once fitted, the peeping Tom device allowed them to spy on female students showering, the court heard.

The prosecution claim that the 21-year-old - who is considering joining the police force after leaving Solent University - had hidden the camera for sexual gratification. With a transformer box and a receiver, Lamble could see images of other students on a TV set in his room, it was claimed.

Discovered

A 22-year-old student told magistrates that she discovered the camera after seeing it protruding from the shower wall just above her head.

"I didn't think anyone would do that," she said. "I thought it was a power cable, but having looked at it closely I pulled the plastic cover back and there were wires running up to the loft."

She and a housemate removed the camera and contacted the police. She added: "It was a pure shock. It caused a strain over the whole year."

Lamble described how he and a friend had installed the camera before other students arrived for last year's autumn term.

He said: "We decided to do it for a bit of fun, bit of a laugh. There was no intention of it going as far as it did."

He said that they couldn't remove the camera because there were too many people about.

He admitted that he had viewed fellow student Amber Santamaria-Hall and his girlfriend Joanne Dunn in the shower, but denied that he had done it for sexual gratification.

He explained: "If it ever came up, there would be a better chance of explaining to them why and stay as friends. In my eyes they were close friends and it would have been very wrong to do it to anyone else."

He told the court that the images were of poor quality because the signal was poor. He added: "There was no intention of trying to get sexual gratification or anything like that. That never came into my head."

Ms Santamaria-Hall described Lamble, of Sopers Lane, Christchurch, as "a bit of a boy always buying gadgets."

She added: "He's always messing around. I could see it would be something of a prank from boys with too much free time on their hands.

"I didn't know they were viewing me. It didn't bother me at all. It was a prank which snowballed out of control."

Miss Dunn said that she was angry and annoyed but then added: "I don't believe there was anything malicious to it. He was bored, it was something to do.

"If I thought it was malicious, it would have ended our relationship."

Magistrates acquitted Lamble of one count of voyeurism, to which he had pleaded not guilty, after they said that he left them in doubt as to his motive.

"I'm absolutely relieved," he said, hugging his parents after the hearing. "It was a prank, it was stupid. I've learned my lesson and nothing like this will ever happen again."