CELEBRITY hairdresser Daniel Galvin Jnr wiped away tears as he was cleared at Worcester Crown Court of an attack upon farming neighbours with an air rifle and rocks.

His appeal against a conviction by magistrates of common assault on Richard Bury and causing criminal damage to a tractor driven by David Bury was allowed and he was granted costs.

Last October's sentence of a five-months jail suspended for two years and 150 hours of unpaid community work was quashed, as was an order for £900 costs and £1,463 compensation.

Mr Galvin, aged 38, of Pensham Fields House, near Pershore, has been a hairdresser for 23 years and his clients have included Madonna, Nicole Kidman and Kylie Minogue.

He was prosecuted after an incident on December 2, 2006, when a boundary dispute with the Bury brothers erupted in an altercation. Recorder Graham Cliff said the dispute had rumbled on for several years with surveyors and lawyers being involved.

He and his colleagues found that David Bury had driven his trailer into Mr Galvin's pond, as either a deliberate or provocative act. Richard Bury alleged that Mr Galvin had taken aim and fired at him with an air rifle and then thrown rocks which had smashed a tractor window and side mirrors.

Recorder Cliff said they accepted the evidence of David Hughes, Mr Galvin's gardener, who had been present during the slanging match but had not seen any shooting or violence.

Mr Galvin was arrested soon after the incident when he had gone out jogging, said Laura Hobson, for the Crown. He immediately denied the allegations and repeated his denials at the police station.

He said that there was an air rifle at his home but it was only used by his 16-year-old son for shooting at cans. There were pellets but the weapon had not been used for two years.

Mr Galvin, his wife and three children, had moved into the Georgian farmhouse with four acres of land in 2001. But tension arose when the Bury brothers bought an adjoining field and dispute about the boundary began. He had replaced a decrepit fence but it had been taken down without his permission.

Mr Galvin said that the pond was on his property but the Burys had mown round the grass edging and on December 2 had seen their tractor machinery in the water. He had offered to buy an adjoining acre for £10,000 but this had been turned down.

Each summer, he erected a marquee in his grounds for a village party but the Burys, who had not been invited, persisted in causing noise and dust by harvesting wheat nearby.

Mr Hughes, who had been gardening with Mr Galvin, denied that he had been lying to help his boss. And company director Anthony McSweeney, who was walking on a nearby footpath, said he had seen the tractor machinery in the pond, heard the shouting and swearing but saw no violence.

Character witnesses called by the appellant included crown court judge Graham White, who described Mr Galvin as a level-headed man who had great patience and tolerance.

Barry Oakhill, a Pensham villager, described Mr Galvin as "a pillar of the community" and said that he found the Burys "intimidating." Roy Bayliss, also of Pensham, praised Mr Galvin's work for the Princes Trust charity and there were other written tributes to his charity work.

His counsel, Sasha Wass, claimed that the Bury brothers had fabricated their allegations out of spite and had manipulated the police and the courts for their own purposes. After the boundary dispute, there had been resentment and malice festering with the brothers. Mr Galvin was not a man to be provoked and he had tried to bring the "childish" dispute to an end by his offer to buy land.