A man accused of 37 historic child sex offences took an underage girl to the funfair before taking nude photographs of her on his bed, a court heard.

Two alleged victims gave evidence at Chester Crown Court in the trial of 79-year-old Ramsey Ramsey, of Grange Road, Chester, who is charged with offences including rape, indecent assault and procuring a female under the age of 21 - all of which he denies.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she met former restaurant worker Ramsey as a 14-year-old, when he and staff at the Bombay Palace on Upper Northgate Street, where he used to work, 'befriended' her and her friends.

She said Ramsey invited her and another friend to Southport, where they visited the fair and his flat on Promenade.

The court heard that Ramsey allegedly took Polaroid photos of her posing naked on his bed while her friend was upstairs.

John Wyn Williams, prosecuting, asked her how she had come to be naked. She said she didn't know.

"At this point he had befriended us and I felt that I could trust him in a way but I still did not feel right about it," she added.

"I felt very uncomfortable. I knew that this man was a lot older than me. I did not think he would hurt me but I just kept thinking about his age and I was so young.

"When I came home from the incident, I remember being panic-stricken about these photographs and desperately wanting to get them back."

When she went back to the flat for the second and final time, she said she retrieved the photos of her from his bedroom.

She said they had been lying next to a shoe-box filled with other Polaroid snaps of women.

She said Ramsey confronted her, demanding to know why she'd taken his pictures, but that he made no attempt to recover them.

She told the jury of six men and six women she took them home with her, cut them into little pieces, wrapped them in several plastic bags and binned them, feeling a 'huge sense of relief'.

When asked by Simon Mills, defending, why she posed for the pictures, she answered: "Because I was naive. I have asked myself that question many a time. How and why on earth did I allow myself to be put in that situation."

She said Ramsey would tell her she was beautiful and that she shouldn't go out with 'smelly boys' her own age because they wouldn't know how to look after her.

She also said she recalled an incident when she and her friend had been in an upstairs bedroom of the Bombay Palace, in which there was a single bed and television.

She said she was sitting behind a curtain whilst Ramsey and the other girl were on the bed and she could hear creaking, which lasted five or ten minutes. She said a porn film was playing.

She claimed Ramsey secured her and her friends entry into Chester nightclub Brannigans after having a word with one of the bouncers.

Also giving evidence, her husband said the investigation and court proceedings have 'set her back as a person because she had kept it all back for so many years'.

Some of the alleged offences are said to have taken place in a bedroom of the Bombay Palace on Northgate Street
Some of the alleged offences are said to have taken place in a bedroom of the Bombay Palace on Northgate Street

Another alleged victim, who also cannot be named, told the court she had a 'gut feeling' when a police detective showed up on her doorstep last September that he was there to ask her about Ramsey.

The court heard that she and her friends used to hang around Northgate Street, near to the old coach park, being 'typical teenagers'.

She said Ramsey would come out and talk to them and soon he was buying them alcohol.

She visited his flat in Southport four or five times with a friend, she said, where he would play porn films on the TV.

She alleges Ramsey took them downstairs one by one to have sex with, when she was aged 14.

Mr Williams asked why she didn't tell anyone. "Because I was scared," she said. "That no-one would believe me. I did not want anyone to know because it was disgusting."

She confirmed that letters she was shown that had been seized from Ramsey's flat - one of which said she couldn't wait until her lips could caress his - were written by her and her friend.

Mr Mills asked her why on earth she wrote letters like that to an older man and why the letters didn't convey any sense of her fear.

"I cannot answer as to why," she said.

A friend of two of the alleged victims when they were 14 and 15 told the court the group of girls would hang around Fountains Roundabout and visit the Bombay Palace when it rained or they needed to use the bathroom.

She said he would give them cigarettes and money, '£40 and £60 here and there'.

"At the time we were teenagers and naughty ones so we used to take the money and spend it."

Mr Williams asked her what her impression of Ramsey was.

"That he was just a dirty man really," she said.

She said she went to his flat in Southport on one occasion with two of her friends, where they drank Baileys and vodka.

She said he took photos of them using a Polaroid camera.

Mr Mills put it to her that the Bombay Palace was 'not a bad place' for the group to go as they could go to the toilet and get a drink.

She agreed with him that there was an 'element that some of the girls in the group were milking Mr Ramsey a little bit because he was generous'.

Craig Morrison, the owner of Ramsey's Southport flat, said he had seen his tenant in the company of girls in their mid teens 'once or twice'.

Mr Morrison's wife Donna also said she had seen Ramsey with two girls dressed in school uniforms on one occasion in 1998 or 1999, who seemed 'perfectly fine'.

The trial continues.