When adoration goes overboard

STARS generally welcome the worship of adoring fans, but it can tip over into dangerous infatuation.

Musicians, actors, TV presenters and sports players often fall prey to stalking because of their position in the public eye.

Experts say celebrity stalkers generally have mental health problems and often imagine they are having an intimate relationship with their victim.

In the most serious cases their obsessed thoughts have turned to murder.

The most famous stalker was probably Mark Chapman, who shot ex-Beatle John Lennon dead in New York in 1980.

He told police he had been inspired by US author JD Salinger’s novel, the Catcher In The Rye.

High-profile cases involving stalkers are rarely out of the news.

A former psychiatric patient who terrified Uma Thurman is facing jail after being found guilty of stalking and aggravated harassment in New York earlier this month.

Manhattan Supreme Court heard that Jack Jordan, 37, had a fantasy that the Kill Bill star was “pre-destined” to be with him.

And in March a childhood acquaintance of British actress Samantha Morton was given a restraining order preventing him from contacting the Oscar-nominated star.

In July 2005 Hollywood star Catherine Zeta-Jones branded Dawnette Knight “evil” after she threatened to cut her into pieces.

Unemployed Knight was jailed for three years for stalking and threatening the actress, claiming she was in love with her husband, Michael Douglas.

And in March the same year both Janet Jackson and Mel Gibson went to court over stalkers.

Other celebrities who have suffered include David Beckham, Madonna, Meg Ryan, Michael J Fox, Olivia Newton John, Pamela Anderson, Sheryl Crow and Gwyneth Paltrow.

Stalkers have also plagued sports stars, in particular tennis players.

A man was arrested in January 2005 after swimming nude across a Florida bay toward Anna Kournikova’s £2.6 million (3.3m) estate, then turning up on the pool deck at the wrong house and yelling, “Anna! Save me!”.

Monica Seles was stabbed in 1993 by a fan obsessed with her rival Steffi Graf.

But it is not only celebrities who falls victim to a stalkers.

A 2005 study in Germany suggested more than one in 10 people may have been the victim of a stalker.