A singer who once supported Shirley Bassey on tour is facing jail after being convicted of indecency with a four-year-old boy.

Billy Nutt swore the child to secrecy after performing a sex act on the child, Maidstone Crown Court was told.

The gay 55-year-old, who runs The Providence Inn at Sandgate, Folkestone and previously ran the Dog and Bear pub in Canterbury, denied sexual assault.

But a jury took less than three hours to convict him on Friday.

Nutt, of Black Eagle Drive, Northfleet, was arrested after the boy told his mother what had happened.

Prosecutor Catherine Farrelly said when police went to his flat last year “in plain sight” next to his bed was a gay pornographic magazine open on a page showing oral sex between two men.

Miss Farrelly said a forensic scientist examined the boy’s underpants he had been wearing at the time and saliva found on the front matched Nutt’s DNA profile.

"He told me not to tell anybody. He said it was a secret..." - Nutt's victim

Miss Farrelly said when the boy claimed to his mother what had happened in the early part of last year he made a licking motion with his tongue.

“She was stunned by what she heard,” she told the jury of seven men and five women. “She was shocked and upset.”

The boy repeated the allegation when interviewed by a police officer. “He told me not to tell anybody,” he said. “He said it was a secret.”

Nutt said in evidence he grew up in the Temple Hill area of Dartford. He played in bands and went on to have a solo career, working in clubs and on cruise ships.

“I performed all over the world,” he said. “I decided to slow down. I’d had enough of driving 2,000 miles a week and rushing to get a boat or plane. It is not as glamorous as it sounds.”

Nutt said he decided to have “a more normal life” running pubs. He declared that he was “openly gay”.

He tickled the boy, he said, and blew raspberries on his stomach. “I noticed he had a lot of saliva on his belly,” he said. “I wiped his belly.”

He claimed the saliva would have been transferred from his hand onto the boy’s pants.

“My reaction to police being at my door was total surprise,” he said. “I felt shocked, stunned, disbelief.”

He added that he did not know how the gay magazine came to be open on the floor of his bedroom.

Nutt, who looked stunned at the verdict, denied having a sexual interest in children and assaulting the boy.

Adjourning sentence until March 20, Judge David Griffith-Jones QC agreed Nutt faced a substantial prison sentence, but continued bail.

He will now have to sign on the sex offenders’ register.