A MAN accused of rape has told a court the alleged victim agreed to have sex with both he and his friend after meeting them at a club.

Michael Gibbs said the 21-year-old girl happily went along with an obscenely-phrased suggestion from Daniel Ward.

Gibbs, 27, of The Willows in Highworth, and Ward, 25, of North Wall, Cricklade, are both on trial at Swindon Crown Court.

They deny having raped the woman at an address in Gorse Hill in the early hours of February 15 last year.

Gibbs, an accounts assistant for what he described as a large retail chain, told his counsel, Alan Fuller, that Ward made his suggestion when the three were in Swindon club Edwards.

Gibbs said: "She replied 'yes'. She responded straight away.

"All I can say is that once she said 'yes' I was just excited at the prospect.

"It was agreed between the three of us, in what context I do not remember, that we should leave."

Gibbs said that the three made their way to a taxi rank about five minutes away, and then made a five-minute taxi journey to the Gorse Hill address.

There, he added the two undressed the woman with her help, and a series of sex acts took place.

At one point, Gibbs said, the sex was interrupted when the friend who owned the property came downstairs, followed by his girlfriend, as the couple wanted to use the bathroom. Gibbs insisted the girl had not been restrained or forced in any way, and that she had offered no resistance or protest.

Mr Fuller asked: "If she had done so, what would your reaction have been?"

Gibbs replied: "I would have stopped."

Earlier, Ward's counsel, Peter Fortune called two witnesses.

But prosecutor Susan Evans showed that both had discrepancies between what they told the jury in court and what they had told the police shortly after the alleged rape.

Lauren New told how she had been with her boyfriend at the Swindon address where the alleged attack took place it being her boyfriend's home.

She claimed she and her boyfriend arrived there at about 12.30am on Valentine's night and that she was awakened sometime later when her boyfriend went to the bathroom downstairs.

The witness said she also needed to use the bathroom and when she went downstairs she saw Ward, Gibbs and the alleged victim.

The two men, she said seemed to be partially undressed while the woman appeared to be naked.

Miss New said the woman made eye contact with her and that she had seen no evidence of the woman being restrained or upset.

However, under cross-examination by Miss Evans, she admitted having told the police she and her boyfriend arrived home at about 11.30pm, that she had in fact been awakened by a mobile telephone call to her boyfriend, and that she had not made eye contact with the alleged victim.

Scott Lester, a friend of both accused, told Mr Fortune he had been present with them and some other friends in a Swindon town centre bar on Valentine's night.

He said the alleged victim had been rubbing her body against him and other people, and that she had shocked him by grabbing him between the legs. But he admitted to Miss Evans that he had told the police that he had regarded her grabbing him as a friendly gesture.

The trial continues.

Barrie Hudson