A bully who held a plastic bag over his partner’s head in what he claimed was an elaborate prank has been found guilty of attempted murder.

Edward Rudd, 37, held his head in his hand after the foreperson delivered the guilty verdict. The Bristol jury’s deliberations lasted barely an hour-and-a-half.

Judge William Hart remanded the dad-of-two in custody for his barrister, Charles Row, to speak to him in the cells. Rudd will be sentenced later this afternoon.

This week, jurors at Bristol Crown Court have heard how a naked Rudd crept into his partner’s bedroom at her Melksham home in the early hours of December 11 last year – just hours after she’d asked him to leave her home.

He flashed a torch in her face, played a mash-up video he’d made of an argument they had had they day before, then went downstairs to turn the electrics off and let the woman’s dogs upstairs.

His partner, Cara Bryant, captured the exchange on her mobile phone. The recording caught him putting on a high-pitched voice, which Rudd said was inspired by Harry Potter’s nemesis Voldemort.

He retrieved a plastic bag and chanted gibberish Latin-like phrases before pulling the bag over the woman’s head.

Ms Bryant could be heard on the mobile phone recording pleading with her partner to stop. “I can’t breathe,” she repeated.

She said Rudd had stuffed part of the bag in her mouth, although he denied it. He then held a pillow over her face.

There came a point where Rudd said he felt he had gone too far, describing it as feeling like a hot-and-cold rush.

He repeated the phrase “I love you” and called Cara “babe”. He termed it “styling out”, defined as behaving confidently in order to manage an embarrassing situation.

Put in the witness stand, Rudd was accused by prosecutor Rob Welling of trying to get his partner back after she asked him to leave her home.

He said: “Cara knew you very well by December 11 she told the police ‘he’s trying to kill me’ and she was right.”