A pensioner admitted to police that he would have "blown his wife's head off" had he loaded his shotgun properly.

A jury at Leeds Crown Court heard how 65-year-old Dennis Broadfield believed his wife Barbara's "philandering" had led him to remove the .410 shotgun from a cabinet at home and threaten to kill her with it on September 16 last year.

An armed response unit was despatched to the couple's home in Westgate, Cleckheaton, after Mrs Broadfield, 62, dialled 999 and said: "Hello, love. I've got a man here with a gun at my head."

The court heard that Broadfield continued to be abusive at Dewsbury police station after his arrest and said: "If you take my guns off me, I'll knife her. I'll get a big kitchen knife and slit her throat."

Simon Jackson, prosecuting, told the court that officers found shotgun cartridges at Broadfield's home as well as a .410 single-barrelled shotgun which appeared to have a cartridge in its breach and four other shotguns in a wall cabinet.

In a summary of an interview between Detective Constable Nicholas Greenwood and Broadfield, Broadfield said he had come home from the pub drunk in the early hours of September 16 and fallen and banged his head at home. On his mobile, he called his wife upstairs to help him, but the phone did not ring. He claimed he also rang the police, but could not get through.

"I don't know what happened and then I got my keys from the desk and I went upstairs and I opened the gun cabinet and I took .410 out and I put a cartridge in that and it wouldn't close," he said.

"I think it was a 3ins cartridge and it was two or two and a half. My wife, my wife grabbed hold of my hand and she phoned the police.

"I was going to blow her head off. It was like a volcano boiling up inside me."

He later said in another interview with his solicitor present that when he realised the gun would not fire, he had just meant to frighten his wife. In the statement, DC Greenwood said to Broadfield: "Your wife said she believes that had you managed to engage it (the gun) you would have shot her." Broadfield replied: "Yeah - true."

He told police his wife had had an affair with an army corporal and with a driving instructor in the past. The couple had been married for 43 years and Broadfield said his wife's affairs went back more than 30 years, but he stayed with her because they loved each other.

Broadfield admitted making threats to kill, but pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life.

The trial continues.