A Telford man who turned a teenager into a human torch has failed to convince the nation’s top judge his recommended 27-year jail term was too harsh.

Jonathan Clarke and two others had tied 17-year-old Simon Everitt to a tree, doused him in petrol and set him on fire.

The horrific attack was a copy of a scene from the 2006 British horror movie, Severance, which 20-year-old Clarke had watched 15 months before.

Clarke, of Queen Elizabeth Way, Malinslee, was jailed for life and ordered to serve a minimum term of 27 years after he was convicted of murder at Norwich Crown Court this year.

The country’s top judge, Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge, together with Mrs Justice Rafferty and Mr Justice Henriques, yesterday refused an appeal by Clarke to cut the minimum sentence on account of his youth. Lawyers for Clarke also claimed that the sentencing judge did not have sufficient grounds on which to conclude that it was a sadistic, planned killing.

But Lord Judge, sitting at the Criminal Appeal Court in London, said: “It is clear on these facts that the judge was entitled to conclude that this was a sadistic killing.

“We are not in a position to say that it had been planned since he watched the film 15 months earlier. That is a finding too far. The immediate trigger for the animosity, the relationship between the girl and the other young men, had yet to develop. But we can see no reason whatsoever to disagree with the judge’s view.

“The judge had the fact of this man’s youth in mind and we cannot see that this appellant has the slightest grounds for complaint at the minimum term.”

The court heard Mr Everitt had been involved in a relationship with 19-year-old Fiona Statham, but so had two of his killers.