A NIGHTCLUB boss was compared to the serial killer Hannibal ‘the cannibal’ Lecter by a terrified woman who said she feared he would rape her.

The woman claims Bushwackers boss Darren Pinches spiked her drink, offered her cocaine and demanded sex while sucking air between his teeth just like the sinister film character played, most famously, by Anthony Hopkins.

The woman said the 52-year-old acted like ‘a raving animal’ and a ‘predator’ as he snorted cocaine in a private office at Browns at the Quay in Worcester before swiping everything off the table and ordering her to: “Take off your pants.”

A video interview with the complainant was played to the jury at Warwick Crown Court yesterday during which the woman, now 44, gave her account of what she says happened on Friday, September 4, 2015 (although in evidence she said she had dyslexia and struggled with dates and now believes the incident took place the following Friday).

Pinches of Bromyard Road, Worcester, denies administering cocaine with intent to overpower or stupefy a complainant to enable him to engage in sexual activity with her and a sexual assault in a Bushwackers storeroom on New Year’s Day last year.

He further denies possession of cocaine at his then home in Berkley Gardens, Fernhill Heath on January 13 last year, supplying cocaine to a second woman between February 9 and 15, 2016 and offering to supply cocaine to a third woman, the subject of yesterday’s evidence, between September 3 and 5, 2015.

The woman said: “He leaned back in his chair. It reminded me of Hannibal Lecter. He drew the air through his teeth and looked at me. It was the way he looked at me. He turned from being normal and quite jovial into some kind of raving animal. He said ‘I’m going to **** you.’ He was talking through his teeth. I just thought ‘oh my God!’

She added: “He absolutely terrified me. I have never been so scared in my life. He was like a predator.”

Before the alleged incident, she had been at Browns with friends, arriving between 7.30pm and 8pm. Pinches sent over complimentary glasses of wine, one so large it did not look like it had been measured, she said.

The complainant said she did not drink them as she was driving, giving them to her friend instead. Her friends got a taxi to Bottles in the city centre at around 8.45pm but she told them she would drive and meet them there.

She said Pinches asked her to ‘come around the back of the building’ to talk but she did not go with him. When she arrived at Bottles she said a young manager from Browns told her Pinches ‘requested’ her back at Browns and had to speak to her ‘urgently’. She told police she had asked the man why and that he repeated that Pinches had ‘requested’ her.

She said she returned to Browns between 10.45 and 11pm and Pinches invited her upstairs.

The woman said: “He said ‘sit there. I can tell you what I wanted to tell you. I could not tell you downstairs because there’s cameras and microphones’.”

The complainant said a stocky, bearded man with pristine hair who looked like ‘a Peaky Blinder’ came into the room and handed something to Pinches which she thinks was cocaine. He then left and the woman said the manager came into the room, prompting Pinches to cover the cocaine with a piece of paper. The man told her that her taxi was here even though she had not ordered one but Pinches said: “She doesn’t want a taxi. You should knock before coming in.”

Once he had left, the complainant said Pinches lined up five rows of cocaine and asked her to take some first. She told him ‘I don’t take drugs’ to which he replied ‘it’s our little secret’.

The woman says he snorted them himself using a £20 note. She said at this stage she began to feel ‘really odd’ and thought Pinches had put something in her drink as she'd had the same thing happen to her years ago in Bushwackers.

“I thought 'I’ve got to get out of here',” she said.

She said after Pinches had taken the cocaine he demanded she take her pants off and she entered what she called ‘a blind panic’. She made the excuse she needed the toilet and left as he called after her a number of times.

She said she would and made calls to her boyfriend from inside the toilet. She also left a message for her partner’s daughter, telling her ‘Darren tried to rape me’. The woman said a manager came upstairs out of sight of Pinches and mouthed at her ‘are you ok?’ and she replied ‘no, I’m not’.

The complainant told the interviewing officer he urged her to leave by the stairs as Pinches continued to call for her. She said she told Pinches she was coming back but needed to get something from her car. When she got to her car she locked herself inside and sat in the passenger seat. She said she tried again to call her boyfriend and his daughter and described finding it ‘difficult to speak’ and said: “I did not feel very well.” The woman, who feared Pinches was following her and wept as she referred to herself as ‘petrified’, said she did not drive away until 3.30am. She said she did not feel capable of driving because her drink had been spiked.

The trial continues.