A JURY in an Old Bailey murder trial was told not to treat their deliberations as if they were evicting a housemate on TV's Big Brother.Edward Jenkins QC told the jury not to reach verdicts based on his client's "unattractive and chauvinistic" personality.

A JURY in an Old Bailey murder trial was told not to treat their deliberations as if they were evicting a housemate on TV's Big Brother.

Edward Jenkins QC told the jury not to reach verdicts based on his client's "unattractive and chauvinistic" personality.

The QC is defending former Suffolk publican James Garside, 54, who allegedly paid friend Richard Bates, 50, to have his wife Marilyn stabbed to death on her mother's doorstep in Romford, Essex.

The two men, who deny murder, claim they had nothing to do with the killing on October 2, 2001, and blame each other in defence.

In his closing speech yesterday Mr Jenkins compared reaching verdicts to reality TV gameshow.

"You don't decide the case like eviction night on Big Brother and as to who should go tonight.

"You don't just think, "Who do I like, who don't I like – who do I want for eviction".

"You have to decide in a slightly different way."

Mr Jenkins told jurors to put aside their feelings towards his client and concentrate on the evidence.

Mrs Garside, 54, and her husband had run the Cross Keys pub in Redgrave for four years before selling up when their marriage hit the rocks in June 2001.

It is alleged Garside paid mechanic Bates £4,000 to carry out the killing while he was miles away in King's Lynn, with a young lover.

He then planned to use the money he would inherit to live abroad with one of his lovers, jurors have heard.

Mr Jenkins told the jury to put aside feelings of sympathy for the grieving family.

"One can only have the greatest respect for the family of Marilyn who have acted with the greatest dignity listening to the evidence in a brutal murder.

"We would be inhuman if we didn't feel outrage, but that is not the point. You don't concentrate on that, you put it to one side and concentrate on the evidence."

On the day of the killing, Mrs Garside was at her mother's home at Rose Lane, Marks Gate, Chadwell Heath, watching television.

She was stabbed repeatedly when she went to the door and found by her mother in a pool of blood.

Garside, of Ullswater Avenue, South Wootton, and Bates, of Castle Acre Road, Great Massingham, both King's Lynn, Norfolk, both deny murder.

The trial continues.