A CHEERLEADER on BBC television show It's a Knockout has described how she was forced up against a hotel wall during a sex assault by presenter Stuart Hall.

Breaking a 40-year silence, the woman, who was just 17 at the time of the attack, was grabbed and forced to kiss the star.

Hall, now 83, was branded a child abuse predator by prosecutors after he admitted indecently assaulting 13 girls including one as young as nine at Preston Crown Court.

The woman said Hall attacked her at a hotel in her home town where the show was being filmed.

She said: "I tried to push him away and it was only the fact there was someone walking along the corridor and the floors creaked that he stopped and I managed to get away."

The victim came forward after the scandal surrounding revelations about Jimmy Savile's sexual assaults on women.

Yesterday, Hall refused to apologise to his victims outside court after he was released on bail.

In court, Hall's lawyer Crispin Aylett, QC, told the court "he is only too aware his disgrace is complete".

Hall previously described the charges against him as spurious.

But the presenter was described as an opportunistic predator by Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for the north-west of England.

He said outside court: "Whether in public or private, Hall would first approach under friendly pretences and then bide his time until the victim was isolated."

In the 1980s, Hall, who was also a regional BBC newsreader and latterly a football commentator for radio, molested a nine-year-old girl. He also kissed a 13-year-old girl on the lips after he said to her: "People need to show thanks in other ways."

Hall was subsequently charged with abusing 10 more girls and the rape of a 22-year-old woman, between 1968 and 1986. The latter allegation was allowed to lie on file after the victim was consulted.

He is due to be sentenced at a later date.