A VIOLENT drunk whose attacks on people in two York pubs were captured on CCTV cameras has been jailed for three-and-a- half years.

York Crown Court was shown video footage of John James, first as he repeatedly assaulted a man in the Kings Arms on Kings Staith and later as he attacked another man outside the Castle Howard Ox, in The Groves.

Another camera then caught him throwing furniture about the bar of the latter pub, causing hundreds of pounds worth of damage.

After police were called, he put in a gumshield and resisted arrest until they threatened to taser him, said Andrew Semple, prosecuting.

Mr Semple said James, 32, of Gladstone Street, Huntington Road, who has a history of drunken violence including stabbing someone in the back, later told police: “You have to let off steam sometimes.”

Asked by the judge whether he was mentally ill, his barrister, Kate Bisset, said he had no diagnosed mental health issues.

She said his friends had said that, when James was sober, he was a “pleasant, wonderful gentleman”. But when he had been drinking, he had committed serious offences of violence.

He had pleaded guilty at the first available opportunity to assault causing actual bodily harm at the Kings Arms on October 18 and to affray at the Castle Howard Ox in the early hours of the following morning, when he caused damage costing between £300 and £500.

She said he was “sick of himself” and of again finding himself before the court for another prison sentence.

The Press reported in 2008 how James had been jailed for four years by a judge at the same court for stabbing a partygoer in the back with a kitchen knife after his victim touched his girlfriend’s knee.

Judge John Taylor told him then: “If you don’t address your behaviour, you will be a serious risk and a danger to other people.”