A SUFFOLK chef jailed for life after killing his wife with a club hammer will be given a chance next month to appeal against his conviction.Colin Dorey's case will be heard in London's Court of Appeal on March 3, almost a year after the 44-year-old first announced plans to appeal against the life sentence for the murder of his wife Christine.

A SUFFOLK chef jailed for life after killing his wife with a club hammer will be given a chance next month to appeal against his conviction.

Colin Dorey's case will be heard in London's Court of Appeal on March 3, almost a year after the 44-year-old first announced plans to appeal against the life sentence for the murder of his wife Christine.

Mrs Dorey was battered repeatedly on the head and face as she dozed on the sofa and while the couple's three children slept upstairs at their Bury St Edmunds home.

Dorey denied murdering his wife but admitted a lesser charge of manslaughter. He was tried at Ipswich Crown Court after prosecutors refused to accept his guilty plea on the lesser charge, and was convicted of murder on a majority verdict by a jury.

During the eight-day trial in the summer of 2002, the court heard Dorey had rowed with his wife over her relationship with another man.

Mrs Dorey was hit at least ten times in the head and face with a heavy club hammer at the couple's Bedell Close home.

The jury heard Mrs Dorey had an affair and a child with her lover a few years after she married Dorey and told him that getting back with him after the affair 11 years earlier had been a terrible mistake.

The defendant had told the court he could see his life and everything he had worked for falling to bits and he had "flipped".

He said he could remember getting a hammer he bought earlier in the day from a B&Q store to demolish a playhouse in the garden and going into the lounge where his wife was resting on the settee.

He told the court: "I must have hit her but I don't really remember."

Their three young children were all in the house during the terrifying attack.

Dorey drove off and left them alone upstairs before calling police and handing himself in.