TV weatherman Bill Giles told Midweek that his own niece had plagued him with poison pen letters for seven years.>

TV Bill tells of poison pen hell

Picture shows Bill Giles

TV weatherman Bill Giles told Midweek that his own niece had plagued him with poison pen letters for seven years.

Mr Giles, 58, of Chinnor, said: "I've had hundreds and hundreds of letters - really horrible stuff - scrawled on postcards or on the back of envelopes.

"People in the village have also received them, including the local pub."

Unemployed Joanna Toner admitted that she had sent countless letters to Mr Giles' Chinnor home.

Toner, 37 - Mr Giles' niece by marriage to his first wife Eileen - made the admission before appearing at Tiverton magistrates, in Devon, on separate charges.

The letters to the weatherman were posted between 1991 and her arrest earlier this year.

Mr Giles said the letters falsely accused him of being her true father and made wildly untrue allegations about his private life. Mr Giles said the letters were sent to his friends, colleagues and relations.

He added: "The village has been very supportive.

"I'm glad it's out in the open and people will realise how ridiculous these claims are."

Mr Giles, who was awarded the OBE in 1995, said: "This woman is telling the most disgusting lies and spreading vile rumours.

"They are fabrications of her devious and twisted mind, but people who don't know me may think some of the things are true."

Toner, a single mother-of-two, made her confession on Friday before pleading guilty in court to making a bomb hoax call to Channel 5 and sending a phone message to the BBC which caused annoyance and needless anxiety, last December 17.

Magistrates were told that Toner made calls to Channel 5 and the BBC after worrying for years about her past.

The case was adjourned for social inquiry reports and Toner was bailed until June 5 on condition she did not contact TV or radio stations.

Mr Giles, who moved to Chinnor in 1993, said he was angry that serious action was only taken when she started making bomb threats.

Toner, of Kings Crescent, Tiverton, said before the court case: "I have been to try to see him at his current home in Oxfordshire and I have written to him and tried to phone him at the BBC.

"I have written countless times but I do not think I am responsible for 800 letters."

A BBC spokesman said that Mr Giles denies any allegations made by Toner but accepts she is the niece of his first wife.

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