The driver of a car, which travelled the wrong way down a motorway, crashing head on into an oncoming vehicle, had been taking cocaine, an inquest heard today.

Christopher Beresford, 18, two of his passengers - Lee Maggs, 23, and Sam Case, 19 - and an elderly couple travelling in the other car were all killed in the collision.

The couple, James Stafford, 69, and his wife, Bridget, 70, had been travelling home to Surrey following a holiday in Ireland.

Newport Coroner's Court heard that the crash happened on the M4 near junction 24 at Newport on September 17 last year.

Police had been chasing the burgundy-coloured Ford Mondeo being driven by Mr Beresford before it pulled onto the motorway in the wrong direction.

The brother of Lee Maggs, Wayne Maggs, said in a statement read to the court that he had originally been in the car with the three dead men and another man, James Bunnett, who survived.

He said they had been "driving about’’ in his brother's car.

"We'd done a lot of drugs, sniffing cocaine, me, Sam and Chris.’’ Mr Maggs said they had ended up in the Penhow area, "messing about and two mountain bikes got stolen from front gardens’’ when the police arrived at the scene.

He said the others had run off while he got left behind hiding in a garden.

Mr Maggs said he called a taxi to go home and the taxi was unable to get onto the motorway.

"I had a feeling straight away that it was them,’’ he said in the statement.