A sadistic boyfriend doused his lover in petrol and set her alight after becoming obsessed with the film Reservoir Dogs, a court heard yesterday.

Steven Craig, 35, soaked Jacqueline Kirk in petrol and set a lighter to her in imitation of the torture scene in Quentin Tarantino's 1991 movie.

Ms Kirk's ordeal, in April 1998, left the 32-year-old scarred for life. After being in intensive care for three months, she can only speak through a tracheotomy tube in her throat.

But yesterday she told Bristol crown court how the lover with whom she had had a violent, four-year relationship, had fantasised about the scene in which the torturer tapes a policeman to a chair, douses him in petrol, cuts off his ear, and dances to the strains of Steelers Wheel's Stuck in the Middle with You.

"I only saw the film with him once, but ... he was always telling me about this bloke dancing and singing as he is torturing somebody," she told the jury. "He thought that he was real cool."

Shaking as she pressed her finger over the hole in her neck to speak, she told how Craig had complained of feeling "humiliated and tortured" after a male friend of hers had thrown him out of her flat in Bath.

He told her he had tried to hire a hitman to kill her, and the next night, after driving her to Weston-super-Mare, decided to douse her with petrol.

The mother-of-two told the court: "Steve told me to pass him a bottle full of petrol and he told me to put my head down. I pushed it down as far as I could, then he poured the petrol over me.

"I could feel it going all down my face and neck. I was just thinking I was going to get battered."

Her lover then handed her a cigarette, telling her it might be her last, and said: "See how calm your nerves are."

She went on: "I took the cigarette and he gave me a light. I just saw a blue flame flash past. I can remember Steve walking away about three paces. I started to feel my arms burning. I turned around and I said 'Help me'.

"He told me to roll. I rolled over and I thought it had gone out, but then whoosh, it went up again. I could not get anything out of my mouth other than 'Help me'.

"Steve told me to roll again ... the next thing I remember is waking up in intensive care."

Craig, now of Horfield, Bristol, pleaded not guilty to a charge of grievous bodily harm with intent, and denied two counts of rape and one of GBH with intent against another woman in January of last year.

The case continues.