A WEST End star was blinded in his right eye after he was randomly attacked by an armed thug while waiting at traffic lights. Mike Holoway, 63, needed stitches inside his eyeball after an attacker smashed through his van window with a metal object in Beckton, East London.

Last night the actor, who is currently unable to work, told of his ordeal and revealed he needs three operations over nine months in a bid to save his sight.

He said: “It was 15 seconds of hell. If it wasn’t for the witness I don’t know if I would still be here. “I was stationary and I heard banging on my door and pulling of the handle. He began screaming and shouting at me.”

Mike, who starred as the main role in Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat for four years, suspects he was targeted in a brutal attempted robbery. He said: “This man smashed his fist through my side window, driver’s side window. Straight into my face, knocked me across to the passenger seat. “I had to have metallic fragments pulled out of my face.

“You think you know how you can react in these situations. But I saw stars. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. “By the time I picked myself up and got my momentum, I reached for my phone to take a picture of the reg plate, but he’d gone. “It was quite a tall man, who looked Turkish, with short dark hair and eyes. He smashed straight through the window into my face.”