A TALENTED artist and musician has been jailed for two months for trying to get a friend to forge a letter to a magistrates court.

Jonathan Phipps asked Scott Denton to use his computer to alter a letter from Kidderminster Hospital about the location of a wasp sting.

Phipps wanted the letter to state that the sting had been in his groin and not on his hand but Mr Denton refused to do it and went to the police, said Mr Mark Wall, prosecuting.

Phipps, 50, of Honeybrook Terrace, Kidderminster, pleaded guilty at Worcester Crown Court to incitement to forge.

Mr Wall said Phipps had been walking in Kidderminster when he was alleged to have made an obscene gesture to a young man in the street. He claimed that he was rubbing his trousers in the area of the groin to relieve pain from a wasp sting.

But hospital records showed that Phipps had been stung on the hand and this was why he had asked for the computer help of Mr Denton. Magistrates had fined him for a public order offence but he was to appeal, said Mr Simon Davis, defending.

Mr Davis said Phipps had been in dispute with neighbours about the speed at which cars were driving along a shared roadway. He was sensitive about the nature of the driving because his son had been killed in a car accident in France 10 years ago.

Phipps was an intelligent man. He gained an engineering degree at Manchester University, started making violins and became a professional musician, touring Europe.

He also took a university degree in art and set up a business restoring works of art. Because of the problems with neighbours and his inability to concentrate, he had had to turn work away.

Judge John Cavell said it was a tragedy that a man of Phipps's background, education and ability should be in the dock. But he had made a deliberate attempt to mislead and deceive a court.