A CUSTOMER who subjected shop staff to two hours of homophobic abuse followed by racial insults has been jailed for 14 months.

Paul Michael Hughes, 49, was angry that the phone shop was out of SIM cards, said Michael Collins, prosecuting.

It was his second conviction for racist behaviour in three years, York Crown Court heard.

When police arrested him, he tried to blame the store staff.

“This is a small, very crowded island and we all have to get on with each other,” the Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, told him.

Hughes, of Northstead Flats, Scarborough, pleaded guilty to one charge of racist abuse and two public order offences.

He was jailed for 14 months.

Mr Collins said Hughes went to the phone shop at 9.30am on October 13 to buy a SIM card.

When he was told there were none in stock, he got angry and was so abusive he was asked to leave.

But for two hours he kept coming back, hurling homophobic abuse at staff, going out and coming back to hurl more abuse.

“At 11.30am, it moved from homophobic abuse to racist abuse,” said Mr Collins.

Hughes made offensive remarks to the store manager that assumed he was a Muslim from Pakistan, the barrister said.

In a personal statement, the victim said: “I am Christian. I attend a Church of England church.”

He also said he was from Iran and was proud of his heritage.

“I am feeling really angry about this incident,” he said. “This is where I live, and this is where I work.

My store should be a safe place for me and my customers. They will be worried about attending my store again. I feel I have lost control and my store is no longer a safe place.”

For Hughes, David Camidge said the previous racial conviction related to an incident in a pub.

The defendant has “quite clearly, mental issues that need to be looked into in terms of the defendant’s behaviour,” he said.

But the mental health issues were not sufficient to justify the defence lawyers commissioning a psychiatric report, he said.

Hughes hoped to start a shop of his own on his release.