AN alleged sex assault victim of Coronation Street star William Roache "doodled" his name on pieces of paper for years before she complained to police, a court has heard.

Jurors at Preston Crown Court were told she did not know why she did it but her claims "eventually all came out" when her husband kept pressing her on the matter.

The woman says Mr Roache, who plays Ken Barlow in the ITV soap, made her perform a sex act on him while he gave her a lift home in his Rolls-Royce.

The alleged incident is said to have happened some time between June 1968 and September 1971.

She was one of four women who came forward to police after Mr Roache was arrested and then charged last May with the rape of a 15-year-old girl in Lancashire. Mr Roache, 81, of Wilmslow, Cheshire, denies two counts of rape and five counts of indecent assault involving the five complainants aged 16 and under on dates between 1965 and 1971.

The woman told detectives that she had been sexually propositioned by another Coronation Street actor, Neville Buswell, who played Ray Langton, when he and Mr Roache got her passes into Granada studios.

Giving evidence, the complainant's husband described how he first realised there was a connection between his wife, whom he married in the mid-70s, and Mr Roache and Mr Buswell.

He said: "She was doodling William Roache and Neville Buswell. I kept asking her 'why do you keep doing that?'. She said 'I don't know why'. This carried on for a while. Eventually it all came out. She started crying."

The man contacted a newspaper last March after seeing a television interview that Mr Roache had given in New Zealand.

"I was absolutely fuming," he said. "He made it out the girls threw themselves at him, that they were all easy and sexually active."

His wife eventually came forward on May 1 last year - the day it emerged publicly Mr Roache had been arrested on suspicion of rape.

The trial continues today.