THE wife of Ulster Loyalist John Thompson, has told how she was shocked and "shaking from head to toe" after hearing a loud bang as her husband drove away from their home in Bolton.

Mrs Jean Thompson told Preston Crown Court she heard the bang minutes after her husband left their Halliwell home to go to work.

A detonator attached to a bomb under Mr Thompsons car activated when he drove over a speed hump outside his home in Windsor Grove although the bomb itself failed to explode.

The prosecution allege that Stanley Curry, a 47-year-old train driver, of Bilton Grange Road, Yardley, Birmingham, planted the bomb under the car of Mr Thompson, described as friend of terrorist leader Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, as retribution for a paramilitarymurder in Northern Ireland of John Gregg 10 months earlier.

Curry is denying a charge of conspiracy with a person or persons unknown to cause an explosion.

In a statement read out to the jury at Preston Crown Court, Mrs Thompson said she and her husband John, commonly known as Jackie, and their 11-year-old daughter Rachel had spent December 16, 2003 - the day before the explosion - shopping.

They returned to their home in the evening, where they ate a takeaway meal before going to bed and watching TV.

She said that the following morning Mr Thompson got up to go to work and went out of the house at 6.50am, while she was still in bed.

She heard him start up his red diesel Escort car, which was parked outside their terraced home, and drive off.

"After a couple of seconds I heard a loud bang," she said in her statement. "I knew straight away from the sound that something was wrong."

She got dressed and went downstairs, and as she reached the front door, she heard her husband banging on the door to be let in.

Mrs Thompson said: "I was shaking from head to toe. I couldnt take in what had happened."

The couple then went outside towards where Mr Thompson had left his car, and she saw small items lying on the ground at the junction with Oxford Grove.

"Straight away I felt my heart pumping. I was shocked," she said.

The pair ran back to their home and Mrs Thompson rang her brother, who also lives in Bolton, and then the police.

She added that, concerned for the safety of their neighbours, Mr Thompson went back outside to stop anyone who might go near the items in the road.

She told police that she had not seen or heard anything prior to the explosion, although nine days earlier she had opened her back gate to find three men in the alleyway looking towards her home, who then hurried away.

Mr Thompson was among a group of family and friends of Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair, who fled to Bolton in 2003, after the death of Gregg.

Proceeding