Scientist behind Dolly the sheep killed himself by mistake in drunken fury

Professor Keith Campbell, 58, tied a belt around his neck and hanged himself from a ceiling beam in his bedroom, but a coroner said he had no intention of dying and was fully expecting his wife Kathryn to go in and rescue him.

By the time she realised what was going on he was dead, the hearing was told.

Prof Campbell, who made headlines around the world in 1997 as the main contributor in creating Dolly, the world's first cloned mammal from an adult cell, was a "regular" drinker who suffered from hypertension, high blood pressure and a heart condition.

Mrs Campbell, 46, a voluntary worker, told an inquest that he arrived home in Ingleby, Derbyshire, on October 5 last year from work at Nottingham University, already having had a few drinks.

Having drunk more at home, he began to act "irrationally", trying to pick a fight with her.

She said at one stage she walked out to the garden to prevent a row, and when she came back in he was holding a kitchen knife and threatening to cut himself.

Prof Campbell, who was three times the drink-drive limit, then went outside and threw an object through a downstairs window, smashing it, before telling his wife firstly that he was going to throw himself into the river and then that he was going to the bedroom, ordering her "not to come in" until morning.

Mrs Campbell said she began clearing up the glass from the broken window and took it outside to the rubbish bin.

When she turned round, she saw him through the ground-floor bedroom window, hanging. She rushed through to cut him down but could not save him.

The hearing was told he asphyxiated and would have died almost instantly.

She said his behaviour that night was "atypical" but she had seen it before.

"It's best not to engage so I left the house for a little while, so there would not be an argument," she added.

Robert Hunter, coroner for Derby and South Derbyshire, said in his drunken state Prof Campbell intended to put the belt round his neck but did so knowing Mrs Campbell was nearby and "expecting his wife to come into the bedroom to rescue him. It was a cry for help".

He said there was no other evidence to suggest he was considering suicide and recorded a verdict of misadventure.

After the hearing, Mrs Campbell said: "He was a lovely man and a wonderful husband."