A Brighton man accused of murdering a sex worker in her own home after he visited her as a client has told a court that he never harmed her.

Satellite TV installer Neil McMillan is accused of punching Andrea Waddell in the face, then strangling her and setting fire to her one-bedroom, first-floor flat in Upper Lewes Road, Brighton, on October 15 last year.

Giving evidence at Lewes Crown Court, McMillan, 42, said he contacted Ms Waddell through her profile on the Adult Works website and arranged to visit her for sex. But he said he did not realise she was the same escort he had booked just two weeks previously but never actually met as he fell asleep.

Cross-examining him, prosecutor Simon Russell Flint QC asked if it was the fact that Ms Waddell, 29, was born male and had undergone gender realignment surgery to become a woman that made him kill her. But McMillan said he did not find out about this until after his arrest and he never suspected she had had a sex change. He said: "I did not punch or strangle Andrea Waddell. I did not hurt Andrea Waddell in any way. I did not kill her."

Mr Russell Flint asked him if she died following a sex game involving asphyxiation that went wrong. He said: "I went to Upper Lewes Road for a bit of straight sex. Nothing extraordinary, if you like."

He added that he did not get everything he wanted out of the half-hour session as he was unable to get an erection. But he said this was not something that made him angry at her as it was his own problem. He also did not get annoyed with her because she refused to perform any act on him.

He said he was not a violent person or someone who often got angry or lost control. When asked about his weight, he said he believed he weighed around 16 or 17 stone last October but although he was heavy he did not think he was particularly strong.

Sitting in the witness box, clean-shaven and dressed in a grey pinstripe suit, McMillan also denied he had an "obsession" with sex. The court was told he spent a large amount of his time trawling the internet for escorts and looking at porn and would even go through the material on his laptop when drinking at his local pub.

McMillan denied he had tried to wipe any evidence of having looked at Ms Waddell's profile on his laptop after she died, saying he always cleared the computer's history every few days to make it work more efficiently. Asked if Ms Waddell was alive when he last saw her, he said she was, adding: "She was leaning over the bath."

McMillan, of Bennett Road, Brighton, denies murdering Ms Waddell. The trial continues.