Jurors in the Gemma McCluskie murder trial have been told that her brother was smoking between 15 and 20 cannabis joints a day.

Tony McCluskie is accused of her murder, chopping up her body and dumping it in a suitcase in the Regent’s Canal.

Gemma went to the opening of the new Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel on March 1 last year, then to a friend where she told her that her brother had left a tap on which had flooded the bathroom at their home in Bethnal Green, the jury heard.

She was arguing with someone over the phone, then complained to her friend that her brother was ‘out of his nut’ smoking cannabis.

“He’s permanently stoned and puts a spliff in his mouth the moment he wakes up and doesn’t know what he’s doing,” she told her friend.

Gemma, then aged 29, was last seen returning to her home in Pelter Street at 1.50pm and was never heard from again.

Five days later, her dismembered body was found in a suitcase floating on the canal after a barge hit it, causing the catch to spring open, the court heard.

Gemma won a part in Eastenders in 2000 when she was 17, but her TV acting career fizzled out, prosecutor Crispin Aylett told the jury. She had since been working behind the bar at two pubs in the Kingsland Road in Shoreditch.

Tony McCluskie denies murdering his sister, but admitted at an earlier hearing to manslaughter which has been rejected by the prosecution.

The trial continues.

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