A 70-year-old man who allegedly made a 13-year-old girl feel like he was playing “head, shoulders, knees and toes” with his gaze, denied rubbing the inside of her thigh outside a Chessington cafe, a court has heard.

Pensioner John Nielsen, of Old School Place in Waddon, Croydon, is charged with one count of intentionally touching a young girl between August 1 and September 14, last year.

He denied this when he appeared at Kingston Crown Court for the first day of his trial yesterday.

Prosecutor Chetna Patel told the jury Mr Nielsen and the girl had met at Hunt’s Cafe in Chessington Business Centre in Cox Lane where they had spoken occasionally.

She said: “Then Mr Nielsen started making comments to her. On one occasion she had curled her hair and Mr Nielsen said she looked ‘really sexy’.

“He also said ‘if there weren’t any CCTV cameras around here I’d take you to my flat’.”

The jury was shown a recording of a police interview with the alleged victim from September 2014.

In the recording she told the interviewee about her love for Disney before she described noticing Mr Nielsen watching her and feeling uncomfortable when the alleged comments were made.

The court heard the girl describe Mr Nielsen playing “head, shoulders, knees and toes” with his eyes when focusing on her.

After speaking to him – often out of politeness – she would run the whole way home, she said in the recording watched in court.

She said: “I’d rather run away than him be able to catch up with me.”

Discussing the day the alleged sexual touching took place, she said he was sat on a bench outside the cafe and asked her to join him.

She said: “He was asking about my holiday and I said I had a rash [on her leg from holiday] and he started rubbing my leg and asked ‘does it hurt?’.”

Former centre employee David Grant said he had never seen anything inappropriate between Mr Nielson, who lived at the centre at the time, and the alleged victim.

Mr Grant told the court: “It wasn’t my intention to listen in but I think she had a few woes and she used to share them with John.

“I think she looked forward to seeing him.”

He added: “I’m a grandfather of nine grandchildren and five lovely children of my own, and anything like that [inappropriate behaviour] abhors me and wouldn’t have gone unnoticed on my part or unreported.”

The girl told the interviewee: “He only spoke to me like this when no one else was around.”

The trial continues.