Chubby Brown denies assault

Comedian Roy "Chubby" Brown hit a woman in the face during a foul-mouthed dispute in a Teesside supermarket car park, a court has heard.

The comic is said to have hit 21-year-old Kelly Oliver after almost colliding with her grandmother’s car in Middlesbrough last September.

Brown, 65 and charged under his real name Royston Vasey, denied common assault at Teesside Magistrates’ Court.

The comedian, of Northallerton, is known for his explicit sexual material.

Ticket machine

Viviene Turner, prosecuting, said Brown reacted angrily after Miss Oliver watched him reverse his silver Lexus within an inch of her grandmother’s car in the car of park of the Middlesbrough town centre branch of Sainsbury’s on 2 September.

The court heard he wound down his window and swore at her.

Miss Oliver, now six months pregnant, said she did not respond.

She claims when she walked over to a ticket machine, Brown got out of his car and began shouting at her.

Brown is then said to have hit her with his right hand on the left side of her face.

The court heard Brown drove off when Miss Oliver’s grandmother said she would note down his registration number.

The court was told Brown admitted in 1996 to common assault occasioning actual bodily harm against his ex-wife, for which he was fined £300 and ordered to pay compensation.

Miss Oliver had two cautions relating to violent incidents and failed to comply with a dispersal notice in 2008, the court heard.

The case continues. </p

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Free music site cleared of fraud

A man who ran a music-sharing website with almost 200,000 members has been found not guilty of conspiracy to defraud at Teesside Crown Court.

Alan Ellis, 26, was the first person in the UK to be prosecuted for illegal file-sharing.

He operated the site, called Oink, from his flat in Middlesbrough from 2004 until it was closed down in a police raid in 2007.

In that time it facilitated the download of 21 million music files.

The site allowed active members to find other people on the web who were prepared to share files.

Users were required to make a donation to be able to invite friends to join the site.

During the trial, which lasted seven days, it was heard that Mr Ellis received $18,000 (£11,000) a month in donations from people using his website.

Months after getting his degree he had saved £20,000 despite only just starting his software engineer job.

Originally, the site was hosted on his home computer, but by 2007 it had moved to a commercial server in Amsterdam because of the amount of internet traffic it was attracting.

Mr Ellis told the court there was no intention to defraud copyright holders.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.