A professional boxer caught with a stash of cocaine worth up to £35,000 says dealing the drug was the “biggest mistake” of his life.

Welterweight Jack Ewbank was arrested after police stopped his car in Bouverie Place, Folkestone, and found four clipped seal bags containing the class A substance.

A search of the 33-year-old's home then revealed a further 340g of cocaine divided into 12 packages, Canterbury Crown Court heard yesterday.

Prosecutor Nasreen Shah said the total amount of drugs was worth between £27,760 and £34,700 and that police had been acting on "intelligence" when they pulled Ewbank over.

A phone was also seized and among its 36,000 messages were those "indicative of drug supply", she added.

A number of pill jars which Ewbank told police related to a new business venture called Level Up were found to be probiotic supplements.

Ewbank, who runs a boxing gym in Ashford, pleaded guilty to being concerned in the supply of cocaine and possessing criminal property in respect of £440 cash he also had when arrested on August 21, 2021.

His barrister Tom Worden told the court he had been "a one-man band" dealing small amounts to users while acting as a "custodian" for others of the larger amount of cocaine found at his home.

Although this was not accepted by the prosecution, Judge Simon Taylor KC said it made little difference to sentencing whether married Ewbank, of Castle Hill Avenue, Folkestone, "had his fingers in two pies or his pie was a little bit bigger".

The judge added, however, that he could take into account his "impressive" mitigation, which included a lack of previous convictions, the delay in court proceedings and his efforts in that time to rehabilitate himself through cognitive behavioural therapy.

Judge Taylor told a visibly shaken Ewbank as he sat in the dock: "That is one of the tragedies - that no doubt the man who stands before me today is very different to the man committing the offence of drug supply.

"The delay in this case gave you the opportunity to prove you wanted to put your offending behind you, and you have."

But on imposing a jail term of two years and five months, Judge Taylor added there was still a need to "punish" him by way of immediate custody.

Mr Worden told the court Ewbank, who has won four of his nine professional fights, had demonstrated "remorse, guilt, regret and shame".

But he said "the most powerful expression" of that was in a letter he wrote to his sister explaining his arrest and pending imprisonment.

"He describes himself as ashamed, disappointed and suicidal, and that his decision to sell drugs was the biggest mistake of his life," the lawyer told the court.

According to his gym website, JDE Boxing, Ewbank is "a firm believer in a healthy diet and functional fitness" and states "I still live by this and practice what I preach".

In an interview in CommunityAd in March 2021, he described himself as an "elusive and technically skilled" fighter.

He also spoke of struggling financially during the pandemic and how he hoped to be launching his Level Up health supplement.