A man who almost died at the hands of serial killer Dennis Nilsen has welcomed a ban on the notorious murderer's memoirs.

Carl Stottor was throttled and almost drowned after being lured to his home where an earlier victim was decomposing in a cupboard.

On Friday Nilsen, who has admitted killing and butchering 15 young men, lost his High Court battle to continue working on and publishing his autobiography.

The legal ruling came as a relief to Mr Stottor, from Brighton, who is still traumatised by his near-death experience 21 years ago.

He told The Argus: "This book would have been a DIY manual for murder. Nilsen claims he has human rights to publish it but what about the human rights of his victims?"

Nilsen began writing his autobiography, The Drowning Man, in 1992 and four years later handed a typescript to a solicitor who visited him in HMP Whitemoor.

The 400-page document is believed to include details of how he killed men he brought back to his flat and stashed under floorboards and in cupboards.

Several copies are believed to be in circulation but none has been published.

Mr Justice Maurice Kay backed Home Secretary David Blunkett's decision not to allow the transcript's return and called the murders "as grave and depraved as it is possible to imagine".

He said Mr Blunkett was "entitled to have regard to the likely effect of publication on members of the public, including survivors and the families of victims of Mr Nilsen's serial offences.

"I am unimpressed by the suggestion anyone can choose not to read whatever may be published."

Mr Stottor, 42, remains haunted by how close he came to becoming one of Nilsen's murder victims a year before the alcoholic was finally arrested.

He described waking in a sleeping bag to find Nilsen trying to strangle him before throwing him into a bath, where he slipped in and out of consciousness for three days.

Finally, Nilsen resuscitated him and allowed him to leave, claiming he had merely tried to revive Mr Stottor after he had been accidentally asphyxiated by a sleeping bag zip.

Nilsen denied six counts of murder and two charges of attempted murder - including that of Mr Stottor - at the Old Bailey in October 1983.

But he was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to life after jurors heard how he lured young men to his north London flat, plied them with alcohol and strangled them.

He would then drown them in a bath to ensure they were dead before stashing their bodies under floorboards and in cupboards.

Nilsen was arrested in 1983 after trying to flush human remains down the toilet at his home in Muswell Hill.

Police searched Nilsen's top-floor apartment and found body parts of three men he had dismembered.

Mr Stottor first met Nilsen in the Black Cap pub in Camden, north London, shortly after breaking up with his boyfriend.

He said: "I had bruises all over my face and Nilsen seemed very caring."

Mr Stottor agreed to stay at Nilsen's flat but not to sleep with him, bedding down in a separate sleeping bag instead.

He recalled Nilsen telling him to "be careful" with the sleeping bag so he did not become suffocated.

He remembers waking to find the sleeping bag pressed over his mouth and began struggling.

He said: "He was trying to strangle me. I couldn't get the pressure of the sleeping bag off me and passed out, then he threw me in the bath. I was thinking 'This is what it feels like to die'."

"He left me to lie in the bath then eventually gave me mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and let me go."

Nilsen then escorted him from his home.

Mr Stottor reported the incident to police but was not contacted until after Nilsen's arrest.

He gave evidence at Nilsen's trial but is still struggling to cope with life.

He said: "I lost a boyfriend who committed suicide because he found it so hard to deal with. I've moved all over the place trying to find somewhere I feel better.

"If it was possible for me to have a gun and kill a single human being, I would shoot Nilsen and then myself."