A MUM-OF-FIVE attempted to smuggle pills into Creamfields hidden in a Kinder Surprise Egg concealed inside her body.

Nicola Hopwood, aged 31, from Whiston, admitted to the unusual stash when searched by police at a security point when entering the festival site in Daresbury in August last year.

Warrington Crown Court heard on Friday how officers swabbed her hands to reveal traces of cocaine she had taken the previous evening.

Hopwood panicked and admitted to having something ‘down her trousers’ and removed the egg from between her legs when in a search tent.

Fifty pills had been put in the plastic egg that usually contains the toy found inside a Kinder Egg. The egg had then been wrapped in a condom.

Tests revealed the pills to contain a class C substance, although the court heard they would have been sold as ecstasy, worth around £500.

Michael Scholes, defending, said Hopwood had been given a weekend ticket in return for acting as a drugs mule.

She pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled drug of class C with intent on August 28 but some details of the plea were not accepted by prosecutors.

Hopwood claimed she did not know the pills would be sold as ecstasy and said: “I just had to give them back to a fella I knew inside “I thought they could be anything.”

Recorder Rowena Goode rejected her claims and said it was ‘inevitable’ the pills would be sold as ecstasy.

She called the evidence ‘unacceptable’ and said her story to police was ‘lame, false and unsophisticated’.

“You were involved in taking these tablets into the music festival with a view to their sale either by you or the people you were with,” said Recorder Goode.

“The concern of the court is that even though these tablets were class C they could have been sold as class A.”

Hopwood, who cried throughout proceedings, was sentenced to 15 months in prison, suspended for 18 months.

The indictment was not altered but Recorder Goode warned her that if the pills had been sold in the festival, she would have faced up to seven years in prison.