Former broadcaster Stuart Hall has been found guilty of indecent assault - but cleared on 19 other child sex charges he faced.

Hall (84) was cleared of raping two young girls following allegations dating back to the 1970s.

Hall is currently serving a 30-month jail term after he admitted indecently assaulting 13 other young girls, one as young as nine, over a period of nearly 20 years.

He pleaded guilty at the start of his trial last week to indecently assaulting one of two new complainants when she was aged 13.

Hall gave no reaction as a jury at Preston Crown Court in London cleared him of 15 counts of rape and four of indecent assault, convicting him of just one count of indecent assault.

But the former BBC presenter mouthed "thank you" to the jury as he was led away to the cells to continue serving his sentence for earlier offences. Detectives and Crown Prosecution Service lawyers looked ashen faced after the innocent verdicts were read out to the court.

Hall had maintained throughout his trial that the two women who later came forward to claim they were raped had agreed to consensual sex.

In an opening statement to the jury at the trial, Hall's barrister, Crispin Aylett, said all the allegations his client faced came under the Sexual Offences Act 1956.

That act provided for offences of rape and indecent assault but also unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 16, he said.

He said the above law also came with an "important restriction" - a 12-month limit when a complaint could be made from the time of the offence.

Mr. Aylett said if Hall had been investigated for the offences at the time, he would have been guilty of unlawful sex with a girl under 16.

"Unfortunately, rightly or wrongly, there is a prohibition from bringing such a charge 30 years or so down the line," he said.

"What is the position where a middle-aged man has sexual intercourse with a teenager? Let me say from the outset that none of this should have happened. The girls were teenagers. The defendant was in his 40s and he had no one to blame but himself" he added.