A MILITANT atheist left allegedly insulting religious images in an airport prayer room in honour of his "hero".

Harry Taylor is accused of placing a series of "grossly abusive and insulting" photographs and cartoons depicting Christian and Muslim figures in the multi-faith room at Liverpool’s John Lennon airport.

The 59-year-old admits the controversial images were "all his own work".

But he told Liverpool crown court he was just practising his own religion of "reason and rationality" in the hope of converting people to atheism.

Taylor added: "The airport is named after one of my heroes and his view on religion was pretty much the same as mine.

"I thought it was an insult to his memory to have a prayer room in his airport."

Taylor, who also claimed the controversial images were "satire" and would not offend anyone, even recited the lyrics from Lennon’s track Imagine.

The images were describedf in court.

included one of a priest with a young girl kneeling in front of him and the words: "No, no my child, blow is just a figure of speech". Another picture depicted the Pope with a condom on his finger, while a further page showed A Dangerous Book For Boys with reference to the Qur’an.

The cartoons included one taken from Danish images of a suicide bomber and another showed a pig excreting sausages labelled "Qur’an".

Taylor, of Griffin Street, Salford, denies three counts of religiously aggravated intentional harassment, alarm or distress.

He admitted being strongly anti-religious, but said people’s faith would have to be "very weak" for them to be offended.

But showing the images to jurors, who all swore their oath on the Bible, Neville Biddle, prosecuting, said the images were "grossly abusive".