A CELEBRITY hairdresser shot at a farmer with an air rifle before pelting him with stones, Worcester Crown Court was told.

Daniel Galvin Jnr was appearing before Worcester Crown Court to appeal against an earlier conviction of assault.

Galvin, who counts Madonna, Nicole Kidman and Kylie Minogue among his famous clients, refutes that he attacked brothers Richard and David Bury, who were harvesting sugar beet in the field adjoining his home in Pensham Fields, near Pershore, following a three-year boundary dispute.

In October he was sentenced to five months in custody, suspended for two years and told to complete 150 hours of unpaid community work, pay £900 costs and £1,463 compensation after being found guilty of common assault and criminal damage.

Yesterday Richard Bury told Recorder Graham Cliff that he was working on his tractor on December 2, 2006 when he turned to see Mr Galvin aiming a rifle at him.

"He was looking through a telescopic sight at me," he told the court.

Mr Bury said Galvin fired and then reloaded.

He said the hairdresser ran inside before returning to throw rocks at his brother's tractor.

He added: "I heard some stones start to hit the glass on David's tractor. I could see Mr Galvin throwing."

He told the court that about 20 pebbles were launched at the brothers.

Sasha Wass, appealing on Galvin's behalf, said the boundary dispute had caused much ill-feeling between her client and the brothers and had included an expensive fence which Galvin had erected being pulled down by them.

She claimed the brothers had made up the story of the attack after David Bury had accidentally damaged the tractor himself.

She also claimed her client had tried to buy an acre of land from the Bury family to end the dispute, but they would not agree.

The court later heard a recording of the phone call to police in which David Bury reported the incident. Glass could be heard smashing.

Mr Bury admitted that he and his brother had received £2,000 for an article, which appeared in the Daily Mail shortly after Galvin's conviction, in which they branded Galvin "a nutter".

The appeal continues.