Desmond Moran, 53, could not remember why he was wearing women’s underwear when got into the flat in Bayswater in July this year.

The woman, who cannot be named, told Southwark Crown Court she was asleep with her kids when he appeared at the doorway. He walked across her room to look out of the window.

Jurors in court suppressed giggles as they were shown Mr Moran’s stockings and G-string.

The woman told the court: “I woke up and I saw him there and he was just looking at us, I felt like he was looking at me even though the two kids were there.

“I said ‘Who are you, what are you doing? What are you doing in my apartment?’

“That’s when I started getting quite anxious and I started screaming at him, and the children woke up.

“When I first saw him I couldn’t see much, I thought he had an apron on, he wasn’t wearing trousers or a jacket, it was like a costume, and when he went to the window and turned around I could see his bottom - I think he had a G-string on.”

He left and was later found in the basement of the block of flats with a laptop and various drug-administering implements.

Mr Moran said he went into the flats to find a bed.

He added: “I honestly didn’t see a woman on the bed, I didn’t see any children in the bed, I honestly thought it was a big panda bear in the bed, that’s what it looked like to me.

“I had taken some drugs but I am pretty certain that’s what I saw, I didn’t see any woman, I didn’t see any kids.”

He queried: “Were they under the panda?”

He added, tangentially, that when the kids began to scream it did not sound like kids screaming but, rather, like a tape of kids screaming.

And the ex-lawyer did not know why he was wearing women’s clothes.

He said: “I could make surmises but I don’t know.

“I think it was a reaction to the cocktail of drugs, I’m not trying to run away or hide from anything, I hold my hands up.”

The jury cleared him after half an hour’s deliberation of trespassing with intent to commit a sexual offence.