WEATHERMAN Bill Giles said he will undergo a DNA test in a last-ditch bid to convince an obsessed stalker he is not her father.

Mr Giles, 60, of Icknield Way, Chinnor, spoke out after his niece, Joanna Toner, was jailed for two-and-a-half years at Barnstaple Crown Court on Monday, following a ten-year campaign of harassment against the former BBC1 weather presenter.

After the case, Mr Giles exclusively told the Bucks Free Press he would now definitely go for a DNA test in a bid to stop Toner, 40, who is convinced she is the secret love child of Mr Giles, from pursuing him when she is released from prison.

He said: 'It may be over, but it may not be. It depends what she is like when she gets out of prison.

'I have not had a DNA test yet, but am happy to do it. I will get one tomorrow if it will convince her I am not her dad.'

The weatherman said he took Toner's threats seriously and said: 'You must never underestimate her. She is very clever and knows what she is doing.'

Mr Giles said neighbours and colleagues had received letters from Toner, and she even falsely accused him of an affair with television newsreader Moira Stewart.

Mr Giles said: 'My wife was a bit more worried than I was, especially when she (Toner) came to Chinnor and started knocking on doors and going to the local pub.'

Toner, of Tiverton in Devon, pleaded guilty to breaching an order preventing her from contacting Mr Giles .

Toner, who is a qualified nurse, was banned from contacting Mr Giles and his family, the BBC and the Met Office after she was jailed for six months in August 1998.

Barnstaple Crown Court, heard on Monday, how Toner doused herself in lighter fluid at the BBC offices in London in December, daubed his name in red paint on the Cenotaph in Whitehall in July 1997, phoned in a bomb scare to a television station, and made scores of telephone calls and wrote hundreds of letters harassing Mr Giles, his family and work colleagues.

The judge, Mr Justice Butterfield, told Toner: 'Nothing, it appears, will deter you from your campaign of harassment which you have conducted without regard to the cost to yourself or the inconvenience of members of the public.'

Toner was ordered to serve two-and-a-half years in jail, but the judge said she should serve half of the sentence.