by staff reporter

Last updated at 15:08, Friday, 20 November 2009

A man and his son were so drunk and abusive at a Cumbrian hotel that they have now been banned from every pub in the area.

And the father has been criticised by a judge for setting his son such a bad example.

Stephen David Robertson, 44, and his son Stephen James Robertson, 21, upset staff and customers in the Cross Keys in Tebay with their bad language and insulting behaviour.

At Carlisle Crown Court this week, Judge Peter Hughes QC criticised the older man, saying: “What an example for a father to set his son.”

And, after hearing that the father had several convictions for violence in his younger days, the judge added: “We are seeing the son repeating the mistakes that his father made 20 odd years ago.”

Prosecuting counsel Robert Wyn Jones told the court the trouble started on a Saturday night in March, when the two men were asked to stop their offensive behaviour in the pub.

“Both were drunk and behaving very badly,” Mr Jones said.

“There were families and young children in there and the staff found it very upsetting.”

The pair eventually left the pub and went to the Barnaby Rudge instead.

It was there that police arrested them, but only after a violent struggle in which Robertson senior bit PC Colin Airey on the hand, leaving him permanently scarred.

Robertson senior pleaded guilty to common assault on PC Airey and to using threatening behaviour.

He was given a 13-week prison sentence, suspended for a year, ordered to do 100 hours unpaid community work, and made to pay £500 compensation to PC Airey.

His son, who pleaded guilty to using threatening behaviour and resisting arrest, was put under probation supervision for a year. Both were banned from every pub and licensed club in the Eden District Council area for a year, and put under a curfew which will keep them inside their home in Whinfell Terrace, Tebay, every night from 7pm to 6am for the next 13 weeks.

Judge Hughes told Robertson senior he would also have to pay the £1,000 costs of the case.

First published at 14:09, Friday, 20 November 2009
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk