A disabled man was called a "no-good cripple" by a friend who knocked him to the ground, attacked him and hit him with a bill hook, a court heard.

Oxford Crown Court heard yesterday that Kevin Norton needed hospital treatment for wounds to his head and back after the attack.

He had at first told police he did not know who had assaulted him but he later admitted it was his friend Nicholas Hancock.

Mr Norton said he decided to come clean when his alleged attacker came to see him -- and told him he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hancock, 33, of Bartlemas Road, east Oxford, denies a charge of causing actual bodily harm. Mr Norton, a former tree surgeon who walks with a stick after an industrial accident, said he had been drinking with the defendant at the Philosopher and Firkin pub, Cowley Road, Oxford, in August last year.

He left the pub five minutes after Hancock and was attacked as he opened the door to his van, which was parked outside the defendant's home. He had planned to sleep in the vehicle.

Earlier that day, the pair had been discussing the sale of a car which friends of Mr Norton bought off Hancock and was faulty.

"I opened the door to my van and got whacked on the head and someone said 'You no-good cripple,'" said Mr Norton. "I was being thumped with fists and feet while on the ground and a hand tried to grab my necklace. I then saw Hancock holding a bill hook next to my neck and he took a swing with it and it caught me on my back.

"I got the hook off him, threw it and it ended up in someone's garden. I was pouring with blood and I think he slipped. That's when I managed to grab the hook."

The trial continues.