ONE of Wales’ most well-known faces, news presenter Justina Simpson, has claimed that she suffered six months of hell at the hands of a fan.

In an exclusive interview with Wales On Sunday, the ITV1 Wales anchorwoman claimed that what began innocently enough as well-wishing cards eventually turned sinister with scribbled sexual fantasies about the star and veiled references to him spying on her.

“I started getting them about two years ago and it would just be the occasional message saying ‘good luck’ or ‘well done’ and I thought, ‘This is nice, it’s good to hear from the viewers’,” said the 33-year-old, who lives in Cowbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan with her fiance, architect Marcus Hadley.

“But earlier this year he’d been sending me up to six different things through the mail some days – I was ending up with boxes and boxes of the stuff.

“Then the mail started getting very sexual,” alleged the Wales Tonight presenter, who’s known for her cheery presence on the flagship news programme which goes to air every week night at 6pm.

“He’d send me different books, everything from Lorraine Kelly’s biography to nature books on trees, and there’d be lots of words and lines highlighted or underlined, mentions of things like heaven and dying,” alleged Justina, who last year figured in a major poll of Wales’ sexiest women.

“There was also a lot of religious ranting too, things all scrawled in between the lines and in the margins.

“But when he sent me a bedtime story book by Roald Dahl called Kiss Kiss which had a paragraph underlined that went on about ‘the delicious feeling as you go to bed that you’re being watched’ – when I read that I was just like: ‘You know what? I really don’t like this any more’,” claimed Justina – ironically hotly tipped in 2007 to take over from departing colleague Lucy Owen, who had herself once been targeted by an obsessive fan.

“To be honest I really didn’t want to get the police involved at first, I thought I’d look like a bit of a drama queen,” she said.

“This could have been just a harmless bloke and I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble with the police.

“But in the end, we decided the best course of action was to alert someone.”

However, despite being clearly shaken by the alleged ordeal the presenter said she was doing her best to rationalise the situation.

“I’m a journalist first and foremost and all the makeup and the cameras are just the final part of all that, so sometimes it’s all too easy when you’re reading the news to forget that people are watching,” said Justina.

A spokesperson for ITV1 Wales said: “The safety and wellbeing of our presenters is paramount.

“This matter is now the subject of a police investigation and we have no further comment to make.”

* A 57-year-old man from the Roath area of Cardiff was arrested on Friday afternoon and charged with harassment.

He is due to appear at Barry Magistrates Court next month.