Television weatherman Fred Talbot used his "boundless energy" and "extrovert personality" to help gain the affection and trust of five schoolboys he sexually abused, a jury has heard.

Talbot, 65, is said to have indecently assaulted his victims between the late 1960s and the early 1980s during his former career as a teacher.

Four of the complainants were teenage pupils at Altrincham Grammar School for Boys, where Talbot taught biology.

Opening the case at Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court, prosecutor Neil Usher said: "The very qualities that made Fred Talbot so successful as a TV celebrity - his boundless energy, his infectious enthusiasm, his extrovert personality - helped him gain, we say, the trust of these boys.

"Trust, which the prosecution say, Mr Talbot repeatedly abused when, away from their parents on school trips organised by Mr Talbot, he sexually assaulted each of them.

"We say that when it came to teenage boys in his care, Fred Talbot was something of a 'chancer'.

"One of these men who regularly and repeatedly tries it on with his intended victim as often as he can in the hope that his sexual advances will not be rejected.

"Or, at the very least, the sexual advances will be met by a passive response due to confusion, fear, intoxication or youthful inexperience of how to react when being placed in such an unusual, shocking and, no doubt on occasion, frightening position.

"And we say that like many child abusers who are in a position of authority who are confident and who are plainly well liked by their peers, he gambled that each of the boys he took advantage of would find it impossible to speak out and tell other adults what he had done, either through fear of not being believed or because it would inevitably involve speaking to parents or other teachers about embarrassing matters of a sexual, indeed homosexual, nature."

Talbot, of Bowdon, Greater Mancehster, who was a regular on the floating weather map in Liverpool's Albert Dock for ITV's top-rating This Morning show, denies 10 counts of indecent assault.