A teenager accused of starting a house fire by pushing a firework through the letterbox, today told a jury it was a Halloween prank gone wrong.

Aspiring professional footballer Lewis Colwell told Oxford Crown Court he lit the rocket while it was in the hand of his friend Jamie Matthews - but denied putting it through the letter box of the house.

Colwell, 18, and Matthews, 19, both deny arson with intent to endanger life following the blaze at a house in Ramsay Road, Headington, in October last year.

Trainee butcher Colwell, of Downside Road in Risinghurst, also denies a further charge of reckless arson, which Matthews, of Manor Farm Road in Horspath, has admitted.

Colwell, an Oxford City Football Club player who has been offered a place at the Oxford United Academy, told the court he had bought the fireworks from a supermarket.

He said: "We both stood there, Jamie asked me to light it (the rocket).

"My first reaction was I said 'no'. He asked me again, so I lit it while it was still in his hand.

"He put it in the letterbox. As soon as I lit it I turned and walked away.

"I thought it was just to scare the occupants of the house. I presumed it would have just fizzed around a little bit and then exploded and made a loud bang.

"We were just playing a prank."

Colwell denied intending to cause damage to the house or injuring people inside and said he had not realised how serious the blaze was until he saw pictures of the damage in the Oxford Mail two days later.

Describing his feelings about seeing the photographs, he said: "I was feeling frightened and scared of what I had done. I was ashamed."

Earlier in the trial, the court heard Colwell, Matthews and a group of friends had gathered in the nearby Quarry Park recreation ground where they had set off a couple of fireworks earlier in the evening.

Peter Coombe, prosecuting, said the group had discussed throwing eggs at the house of Patrick Neil, a football coach who lived in Ramsay Road, but changed their minds.

He told the court Colwell and Matthews had then gone in and out of gardens in Ramsay Road before putting the firework through the letter box of a two-storey house while a family was asleep inside.

David Norbrook, his wife Sharon, and their two boys then aged three and six, were woken by a smoke alarm and fled through the back door of the house.

The court heard Matthews told police he rested the firework in the letter box but Colwell had lit it.

Reading what Matthews told police, Mr Coombe said: "The idea was to prank them, to wake them up.

"It was a silly prank and it went wrong and it should not have happened."