A dad has been jailed after sniffing a sex toy in front of a female Go Outdoors worker in a vile stag do ‘prank’ that left her in tears.
Ricki Hughes, 41, presented the explicit item to a member of staff inside a shoe box while pretending to seek a refund on footwear, before telling her: “It’s just banter.” Hughes, from Runcorn, Cheshire, pleaded guilty to one count of using threatening, abusive or insulting behaviour causing harassment, alarm or distress during at Warrington Magistrates’ Court on March 19 this year, and was jailed for 18 weeks.
At a hearing at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday afternoon to appeal his sentence, his defence barrister likened his actions to classic comedies Benny Hill and Candid Camera and said he had a “very traditional” sense of humour.
Lucy Moran, prosecuting, described how the defendant had entered the branch of Go Outdoors in Warrington town centre at around 2.30pm on January 4 this year and presented a staff member with a shoe box while requesting a refund. She found that this box contained both a pair of shoes and a “flesh toned sex toy”, reports the Liverpool Echo.
She then noticed that a second man was standing behind Hughes and filming the interaction on his mobile phone, at which stage she “realised that she was the victim of a prank”. She was left feeling “humiliated” as a result, and asked the customer to leave as he was “making people feel uncomfortable”.
Hughes however told her “it’s just a joke, it’s just banter” before taking the sex toy out of the box and “inviting [the staff member] to hold it”, then holding the item to his nose and sniffing it. The shop worker, a student teacher, became “incredibly distressed and tearful” and had to be escorted into an office by colleagues after “bursting into tears”.
The culprit was later identified following a CCTV appeal by Cheshire Police. Hughes was said to have “giggled throughout” a voluntary interview with detectives.
His criminal record shows a total of 30 previous convictions for 69 offences, including drug offences, breaching community orders and failing to surrender to bail.
Julian Nutter, defending, told the court: “We still have a sense of humour in this country. There is a tension which stretches between a modern interpretation about how people should behave and a very traditional one.
“Those of us old enough to remember the programmes of Benny Hill and Candid Camera, when there was television footage galore of people being put in surprising and shocking situations, will remember a very different world, in which jokes would be made at people’s expense. That is wholly inconsistent with the ‘I’m offended’ culture of the modern age.
“It is bound to be the case within that tension that somebody who belongs to the earlier tradition gets it wrong, and somebody who belongs to the modern tradition gets it right. He finds himself, as a result of this, with a relatively substantial immediate custodial sentence which has had a powerful impact on him.
Mr Nutter said that in his police interview it was clear that Hughes “saw all of this as a joke” but “showed remorse when he realised that he had upset somebody.”
He added: “He has got a family. He is a carer for his son, who suffers from Tourette’s. He is now, whatever happens today, recalled to prison until July 2026. He deeply regrets what he has done and regrets offending this lady, but I cannot overstate that this was borne out of a joke.
“The joke arose out of it being somebody’s stag do at the time. Somebody else came up with the idea of a challenge. That is what men do. Anybody walking the streets of Liverpool on a Friday or Saturday will see people dressed as cockerels or half naked on stag and hen dos. This has plainly got out of hand. It was intended to be funny.”
Hughes nodded and said “thank you” to the judge as his sentence was reduced to one of 12 weeks. He was previously told to pay court costs of £85 plus a £154 victim surcharge by magistrates.
Recorder Carwyn Cox told him following his appeal: “In our view, this incident was clearly distasteful and ill thought through. You thought it to be a joke, when it was really not a joke for those women who were trying to do their jobs. To try to equate this to the comedies of years gone by does not cut it. There was obviously no need for this behaviour to have taken place on this day.
“We do accept that the decision of the lower court was wrong, but only to a degree. There are previous convictions relating to your failure to comply with previous court orders. This was an offence committed on licence, for which you have been recalled to prison.
“We find that there is very little by way of mitigation. The acceptance we have opposite someone still laughing does not smack of significant remorse. This was clearly something that you and your group thought was going to be funny, but it was far from it.”
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