A FAMILY was reduced to tears when their charity worker father was jailed for using a knuckleduster in a town centre fight.

Jason Roberts got 12 months for attacking a man who allegedly made a lewd suggestion to his wife.

The 36-year-old from Avery Close, in Longford, was caught on CCTV punching the man then lying on top of him demanding an apology.

Police arrived on the scene outside Central Station and Roberts threw the knuckleduster into a bin but he was arrested.

The victim, Mr Doodson, suffered minor injuries. He did not make a complaint to police.

Roberts pleaded guilty to affray for the attack at 3.45am last July and was sentenced at Warrington Crown Court on Friday.

He has been married for 19 years with a 17-year-old daughter. Family members cried as he was led down to the cells.

Roberts had a conviction for GBH in 1988 and one for theft in 1991 but nothing since. Robert Ackerly, defending, said: "What occurred was completely out of character."

John Lunt, the former chairman of the Sea Cadets, told the court he had taken Roberts under his wing when he was young because he was being bullied at school.

Mr Lunt said Roberts was always the first to volunteer to carry out fundraising events for the cadets and for several hospitals, carried on fundraising when he was an adult, and took physical training classes for the boys.

But Judge Nicholas Woodward decided the use of weapons made the offence serious enough to warrant a prison sentence.

An accomplice who inflicted a four-inch scratch to Mr Doodson's leg with a screwdriver, Leon Cullen, aged 19, from Sinclair Avenue, in Longford, was jailed for six months.