A FLASHER has been jailed after he was found guilty of exposing himself to a nine-year-old boy and police officers.

Andrew Fearnley-Hill has this week been standing trial at Liverpool Crown Court, charged with one count of exposure - having 'stumbled around' Warrington town centre performing sex acts on a Saturday morning.

Beginning on Monday, January 14, the trial heard from two witnesses who spotted the 48-year-old on Cairo Street and Rylands Street on the morning of Saturday, October 20.

At around 9.30am on the day in question, a family-of-four parked up on Cairo Street having visited the town centre in order to buy Halloween decorations.

The court heard that, as they walked towards Sankey Street, Fearnley-Hill – described as wearing a green hat, a navy blue jacket, a red hoodie and blue jeans at the time of the incident – was stood in their path near to the entrance of the Cairo Street Unitarian Chapel performing a sex act on himself.

He was seen by the family’s nine-year-old son – who was described in court by his mum as being ‘shaken’ by the incident.

She said: “When we were getting out of the car, I noticed a man who was bent over – I thought he was acting strangely.

“As we were getting closer to him, I noticed that he had his private parts out.

“My nine-year-old saw him, and he was a bit shaken up.”

The court was shown CCTV footage of this incident.

After the witness called the police, the man walked away in the direction of Rylands Street.

Fearnley-Hill then stood on the pavement for roughly 15 minutes and exposed himself to more than a dozen people.

The defendant, of no fixed address, again walked away from the scene when he spotted a female witness calling the police.

She told the court: “He was drunk, just stumbling around – he wasn’t that far away so I could see what he was doing very clearly, I felt uncomfortable.”

In all, Fearnley-Hill – a former CCTV operator who has seven previous convictions for offences including indecent exposure and outraging public decency – had walked through the town centre exposing himself for up to an hour.

After being arrested on Barbauld Street, Fearnley-Hill then exposed himself to two police officers.

As they were performing a search of the defendant near to Showbar nightclub, his genitals were exposed when they unfastened his coat.

When he was interviewed by police, Fearnley-Hill claimed he had ‘drank too much cider’ and claimed to have been urinating.

But in court, he changed his defence and alleged that it had been a case of mistaken identity.

He even bizarrely claimed that the man heard on a recording of the custody interview, which was played to the court, was not his own.

A jury found Fearnley-Hill – who had been sleeping rough in Stockton Heath and had a paper round at the time of the incident – unanimously guilty of exposure on Wednesday afternoon.

Judge Anil Murray jailed him for two years.