AN Elton John tribute act stabbed his mother and tried to kill his father in a violent attack after they refused to sell the family’s Hereford home, a court has been told.

Mark Ruck, 43, stabbed his 70-year-old mother in the arm with a lock knife and then stabbed his father three times in the head before the 72-year-old grabbed a machete to ward him off, Worcester Crown Court heard on Monday.

Ruck has admitted wounding Michael Ruck with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and wounding Bedelia Ruck but has denied a charge of attempting to murder his father.

Robert Price, prosecuting, told a jury Ruck stabbed his father Michael with “some force”.

“Before he did that he was threatening to kill his father and after he did that, he was expressing the hope that his father was dead,” Mr Price said.

“The only sensible interpretation that can be applied to those basic facts is that Mark Ruck was intent on ending his father’s life.”

Ruck, who claims to have made television appearances while performing as Elton John, had jointly bought the former council home with his parents in Escley Drive, Redhill, and lived there for 30 years.

Without his father’s knowledge, Ruck had taken out a second mortgage and had debts topping £23,000.

The court was told that on September 6 last year, Ruck had gone out drinking at midday and returned in the evening.

His father was in the garden shed where there was a TV and he would regularly go there “for some peace,” Mr Price said.

Ruck had clearly been drinking and told his mother he was going to sell the family home because he wanted money to take a paramedic’s course.

“Money problems were weighing heavily on his mind and must have been a source of frustration and anger,” Mr Price told the jury.

His mother said she didn’t want to sell their home and started to cry. He called her “pathetic,” Mr Price said.

Ruck later told his parents that if he couldn’t sell the house, he would “burn it down while they were present.”

Mr Ruck went out to his shed while his wife to bed. Shortly afterwards, her son appeared in her room with a lock knife. She got up and went to warn her husband and as she tried to get past Ruck at the foot of the stairs he recklessly stabbed at her, causing a cut on her arm.

He went to the shed and confronted his father, calling him “thick and useless” and wanting to fight him. He said “I wish you and mum were dead. I will kill both of you,” Mr Price told the jury.

He stabbed his father in the forehead and just above the ear with some force. His father then took down a large machete he had brought back from Singapore in the 1960s and had kept hanging on the wall and Ruck left.

A neighbour arrived and calmed down the situation. Ruck told her he had stabbed his mother and father but they were alive though he wished they were dead. He left in his van before police stopped him in a nearby street and he was found to be clearly over the drink drive limit.

He admitted he had stabbed his parents but denies, however, having an intent to kill.

“He said to police: ‘It’s fine, good, put me down for 10 years, boys, that’ll do me,’” Mr Price said.

Police found a county court judgment for £23,102 in his room and a solicitor’s letter putting a charging order in the house, Mr Price said.

Michael Ruck told the jury his son looked “angry and vicious” and his “eyes were popping out” as he launched the attack.

The father was treated in hospital and still suffers trauma from the attack.

The trial continues.