The niece of a British government minister goes on trial today accused of the murder of a young Frenchman whose throat was slit after she picked him up in a bar and brought him to her home.

Jessica Davies contacted police in the early hours of a Sunday morning in November 2007 to say she had stabbed the 24-year-old man at her apartment in the chic Saint-Germain-en-Laye suburb west of Paris, judicial sources said.

Police found the now 30-year-old niece of Britain's multi-millionaire junior defence minister Quentin Davies so drunk that she could not be brought before a judge until the evening, sources said at the time.

Ms Davies, who is being held in Versailles women's prison, claimed to remember nothing of the stabbing, only that she had met Olivier Mugnier in an Irish pub near her flat a few hours before his death, according to one source.

Ms Davies faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison if convicted of voluntary homicide without premeditation. The British press speculated after her arrest that Mr Mugnier's death was the result of a sex game that turned to violence.

British papers drew parallels with a high-profile murder in Italy -in a sex game that turned violent and led to its victim being stabbed in the neck - just a few days earlier of 21-year-old British student Meredith Kercher.

The papers said French police have probed whether Ms Davies was inspired by that murder, for which US student Amanda Knox was handed a 26-year prison term last month and for which her Italian boyfriend also got 26 years in jail.

Ms Davies, born in London to a British father and a French mother, was reportedly depressed after splitting up with her French boyfriend, with whom she had shared the one-bedroom flat for four years. She had taken to going out on boozing sessions and picking up men, neighbours and locals said.