A man was caught using a video camera to film women and children at a busy shopping centre last summer, a court has heard.

John Kane, 67, recorded footage of more than 60 women in the Central Retail Park in Graham's Road, Falkirk, and at a nearby Tesco store.

He also secretly filmed children playing outside a nearby branch of Next.

When Kane was arrested on a separate matter he tried to flush a memory card down a toilet, prosecutor Ann Orr told Falkirk Sheriff Court.

The card was analysed and found to contain 60 short videos, lasting between 50 seconds and three minutes.

Ms Orr told the court: "The recordings appeared to be of adult females at various shops in the Central Retail Park.

"The camera operator has the camera positioned to show the females from the waist down, focusing on their bare legs and zooming in on their bottoms."

The depute fiscal said the memory card also contained three slightly longer videos, each about three minutes, showing children aged between six and 12.

Ms Orr said: "One child is doing cartwheels and the camera zooms in on the crotch area."

The court heard Kane was caught when he was arrested over a drink-driving offence and taken to Falkirk Police Station in July 2016.

It was then he tried to dispose of the memory card, which was recovered by officers who spotted him acting suspiciously.

Asked if what he had done aroused him, he said: "It did at the time but afterwards I felt ashamed about it."

Kane, of Breton Court, Falkirk, pleaded guilty to committing a breach of the peace by operating a recording device to obtain footage of women and children in a public place without their knowledge and consent between July 15 and 22, 2016.

Sheriff Livingston deferred sentence until March 30 for a risk assessment and placed Kane on the sex offenders register.