A drunken thug has been jailed for more than four years for a fight near a nightclub which has left a man being fed through a tube and unable to speak.

Liam Bayliss, 24, has been locked up for his premeditated search for a fight which had catastrophic effects on Joe Shaw, leaving him in a coma.

He had tried to pick a fight with a girl for not wanting to dance with him and then picked a fight with another man.

His pal Kevin Conlin made heroic attempts to pull him away and get him home safely, even wrestling away a bottle which Bayliss picked up.

Oliver Kirk, defending, said this was premeditated violence and wants to apologise for his behaviour that night near Rokka Bar in Ramsgate.

Jailing him for four years and three months, Judge Rupert Lowe told Bayliss, who admitted causing grievous bodily harm, "you have a serious problem with drink and when you drink you get nasty.

"You tried picking a fight with five or six groups of men that night.

"You personify the very worst of this blight on British town centres at throwing out time.

"Joe Shaw wanted to teach you a lesson. It was a tragic misjudgement on his behalf. But he wouldn't have done so but for you.

"You delivered a hard vicious and deliberate punch knocking him out.

The harm to Joe Shaw has been all but life ending.

His mother said he is now fed through a tube in his stomach, has no use on his left side and little on his right, has half his brain missing and is unable to speak.

The judge told Bayliss: "That's what you did,"

Bayliss, of Newcastle Hill in Cliftonville, Margate, had denied claims that he had kicked the victim who lay injured on the ground after the scrap.

Joe Shaw had returned from travelling to Australia just a month before the attack.

His mum Nancy said: "This is every caring parents' nightmare. The ridiculous attack has ruined our lives."