'Not guilty' verdict in assault trial

Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown has been cleared of punching a woman in the face a row in a supermarket.

Kelly Oliver, 22, had claimed the 65-year-old comic had unleashed a tirade of abuse at her after she gave him a dirty look for almost colliding with her grandmother’s car; then assaulted her.

Oliver claimed that Chubby – real name Royston Vasey – shouted ‘Who the fuck are you looking at?’ at her in the car park of Sainsbury’s in Middlesbrough in SeptemberrnBut Vasey clamed the confrontation began when Miss Oliver's swore at him, calling him ‘fucking old, fat bastard’ and ‘fucking wanker’, and he asked her to show some respect.

Vasey – who encourages his live audiences to chant ‘you fat bastard at him’, told Tesside magistrates: ‘I needed to tell her that the person she sees in the car park and the person she sees on the DVD are not the same person.

‘I just think that people who use language like that in a car park at one in the afternoon are just uneducated scumbags.’

Magistrates said inconsistencies in evidence and the poor quality of CCTV footage meant they could not find him guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

Published: 17 Mar 2010