Copeland told him: "I planned this. I have been dreaming about it for ages - doing what I did, getting caught, going to court - it is my destiny."

David Copeland: "It is my destiny"

The doctor said: "He said he felt exhilarated by the newspapers when he saw the photograph of where he lived - 'Not about the people I maimed and killed, just the media and the spotlight'."

Dr Dean said Copeland told him he felt OK at first about other groups claiming responsibility for his bombing campaign as it meant the police would not be looking for him.

But he added that after a while he began to feel cheated that others were claiming they were responsible for the explosions.

'No hallucinations'

Dr Dean said he found no suggestion at all of delusions or hallucinations or thought disorder when he examined Copeland.

Copeland, 24, an engineer working on the Jubilee Line underground extension, has admitted causing explosions in Soho, Brick Lane, east London, and Brixton, during April last year, in which three people were killed and 129 injured.

He is being tried for murder after the prosecution refused to accept his pleas of guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

Brick Lane bomb caused chaos

His final bomb, at the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho killed pregnant Andrea Dykes, 27, and friends John Light, 32 and Nik Moore, 31, from Essex.

Mrs Dykes' husband Julian was severely injured.

Dr Dean said Copeland told him he had been prescribed medication for panic attacks which he had suffered for about a year, but had stopped a month earlier.

"He put it down to stress - to his hatred of everything which had built up since he was a child - 'Just having a shit life'.

"He said he felt stress from about 12 or 13 and felt his parents had brought it on."

He recommended that Copeland should be kept under observation while being held in police custody.

Dr Dean added: "There was no suggestion of any suicide intent. He maintained an exceptional degree of calmness. But in the circumstances I felt it was a precaution."

"It was almost surprising, the calmness - the matter of factness with which he approached the whole thing."