A FORMER contestant on television's Blind Date was handed an indefinite jail sentence for the rape of a 15-year-old girl after plying her with cannabis.

Johnny Law, 38, was jailed for a year in 2002 after giving a 15-year-old schoolgirl cannabis and having sex with her and was last week jailed after raping a girl in Hampshire.

Judge Ian Pearson's sentence at Portsmouth Crown Court means Law formerly of Iffley Road, Oxford will be jailed until the parole board deems him safe to release.

Judge Pearson ordered that this would be a minimum period of four years. He also sentenced him to 12 months to run concurrently for possessing cannabis resin with intent to supply.

The court heard Law was a regular cannabis and cocaine abuser but had weaned himself off the drugs while in custody.

Sentencing Law, Judge Pearson said: "There is a significant risk to the public of serious harm by your committing further offences."

The court heard of Law's Oxfordshire conviction for unlawful sexual intercourse with the 15-year-old girl.

As well as being jailed for 12 months in February 2002, he was put on the sex offenders' register for ten years.

Law, pictured during his Blind Date appearance, had been charged with rape in connection with this incident but this was dropped because the victim was too frightened to give evidence.

The court also heard that in December 1995, Law was cleared at Oxford Crown Court of raping a young mother after he insisted that she had consented and no medical evidence of rape was presented during the trial.

It was 11 months after this trial, in November 1996, that Law appeared on the ITV show presented by Cilla Black.

The audience and his fellow contestants did not know that Law had previously been accused of rape.

Producers LWT said afterwards that Law, a former singer, had signed a statement declaring that he had no criminal past.

The trial at Portsmouth Crown Court heard that Law, who most recently worked as a delivery driver, picked up his teenage victim in his van in Waterlooville.

He then gave her cannabis and carried out the sexual attack in a nearby field, the court heard. The jury was also told that the girl's clothing showed traces of Law's DNA.

Law, of Green Road, Southsea, fled back to Oxfordshire but was quickly arrested.