Ananova:

The man who tried to kill George Harrison was a paranoid schizophrenic who thought the Beatles were "all witches", a court has been told.

Michael Abram, 34, who denies attempting to murder Harrison and his wife Olivia after breaking into their mansion home on December 30 last year, had also plotted against Paul McCartney, the court has heard.

Abram was consumed with persecutory delusions and believed he was possessed by a phantom menace, an event which he thought Nostradamus had predicted, psychiatrist Dr Phillip Joseph told Oxford Crown Court.

Abram's condition deteriorated after the solar eclipse in August last year, and he became convinced he was on a mission from God.

Dr Joseph says Abram would sit on a upturned plant pot in his bare flat in Huyton, Merseyside, listening to songs by John Lennon, Bob Marley, U-2 and the Beatles, which would feed his delusions.

He added: "He was trying to make sense of what was going on in his mind. He began to realise that the person behind this was George Harrison and realised that he was the phantom menace. He was aware that John Lennon had previously said the Beatles were more famous than Jesus. He thought for a time it was Paul McCartney that was the phantom menace."

It was only an apparently imaginary belief that his ex-girlfriend had stolen £80,000 from a drug dealer which convinced Abram that Harrison was the phantom menace. He developed this conviction after listening to the refrain It's Gonna Take Money from Harrison's 1987 I've Got My Mind Set On You song.

Dr Joseph added: "It was by a process of elimination that he thought George Harrison was the Alien from Hell. He believed that Harrison possessed him and told his girlfriend to steal the money. He thought the Beatles were witches flying on broomsticks from hell."

Dr Joseph says that Abram would rant in the street, and was repeatedly arrested. He was even admitted to a psychiatric hospital, but was discharged after assaulting a nurse. He told the court that father-of-two Abram, who he said was of average intelligence, started to go off the rails after his relationship with his girlfriend, Jeanette, broke down.

Abram, a former drug addict, decided he had to confront Harrison, and started to scout around the 57-year-old star's 34 acre estate, Friar Park, at Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, on December 6.