A singer and pub landlord has been jailed for four years for indecency with a four-year-old boy.

Billy Nutt, who once supported Shirley Bassey on tour, stood shame-faced in the dock as a judge told him the offence had been an aberration and “utter madness”.

The gay 55-year-old, who runs The Providence Inn at Sandgate, Folkestone and previously ran the Dog and Bear pub in Canterbury, denied sexual assault, but was convicted by a jury.

Maidstone Crown Court heard Nutt, of Black Eagle Drive, Northfleet, was arrested after the boy told his mother what had happened.

“My reaction to police being at my door was total surprise,” he said. “I felt shocked, stunned, disbelief” - Billy Nutt

Prosecutor Catherine Farrelly said when police went to his flat last year “in plain sight” next to his bed was a gay pornographic magazine open on a page showing oral sex between two men.

Miss Farrelly said a forensic scientist examined the boy’s underpants he had been wearing at the time and saliva found on the front matched Nutt’s DNA profile.

Miss Farrelly said when the boy told his mother what had happened in the early part of last year he made a licking motion with his tongue.

“She was stunned by what she heard,” she said. “She was shocked and upset.”

The boy repeated the allegation when interviewed by a police officer. “He told me not to tell anybody,” he said. “He said it was a secret.”

Nutt, who grew up in the Temple Hill area of Dartford, said he played in bands and went on to have a solo career, working in clubs and on cruise ships.

“I performed all over the world,” he said. “I decided to slow down. I’d had enough of driving 2,000 miles a week and rushing to get a boat or plane.

"It is not as glamorous as it sounds.”

Nutt said he decided to have “a more normal life” running pubs. He declared that he was “openly gay”.

He claimed he only tickled the boy and blew raspberries on his stomach. “I noticed he had a lot of saliva on his belly,” he said. “I wiped his belly.”

He said he believed the saliva would have been transferred from his hand onto the boy’s pants.

“My reaction to police being at my door was total surprise,” he said. “I felt shocked, stunned, disbelief.”

He added that he did not know how the gay magazine came to be open on the floor of his bedroom.

Nutt denied having a sexual interest in children and assaulting the boy.

Judge David Griffith-Jones QC made a restraining order banning Nutt from contact with the boy or his mother.

His name will appear on the sex offenders’ register and he will be barred from working with children.

A sexual harm prevention order banning unsupervised contact with children was made to protect the public.

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