AN UNEMPLOYED builder has been found guilty of racial abuse towards two pub managers in a Kent city.

Robert Wellstead, 50, of Oxford Road, Wincheap, Canterbury, denied insulting Selman Gunjar and Tyrone Alexander - of City Arms and Bar 11 in Canterbury - claiming his use of "monkey" was "just a figure of speech".

Magistrates took about an hour to find him guilty of racially-motivated insults and behaviour.

Wellstead began his verbal tirade after being asked to leave the City Arms by Mr Gunjar for trying to sell DVDs to customers in August.

He swore repeatedly and said to Mr Gunjar, who is Eritrean, "Go away, monkey".

Caroline Van Hensbergen, defending, argued her client had left school at 14 and "lacked the education or social understanding to know his comments were innappropriate".

He later went into the Thomas Ingoldsby pub in Burgate where Mr Alexander helped the manager eject him again. He called Mr Alexander a "monkey" and made distasteful remarks about his mother.

Police arrested Wellstead at Canterbury bus station.

Noel Watkins, prosecuting, asked Wellstead if the word "monkey" was suitable for someone he had never met.

He answered: "Yes. It depends on the context you take it in. It’s a figure of speech. I have not got a racial thing in my body."

Wellstead will be sentenced on December 6.

For more details see next Thursday's Kentish Gazette.