TWO men ended up brawling in a pub because one of them broke the other’s toy gun.

Matthew Ludlow grabbed the gun and accidentally broke it, prompting the owner Luke Brown to pull down Mr Ludlow’s sombrero hat.

This infuriated Mr Ludlow who punched Mr Brown in the face, leaving him with a cut lip.

Worcester magistrates were told both men were out separately with friends in Lloyd’s Bar, Worcester, on Saturday, August 29.

Mr Brown was dressed as a pirate and Mr Ludlow, aged 20, was wearing a Mexican-style sombrero hat. Mr Brown had been dancing with a group of girls on a hen night and they had taken some of his toy weapons to play with.

But when Mr Ludlow became involved, the gun broke after he believes Mr Brown pointed it at him.

Mr Ludlow told Worcester Magistrates Court he had not meant to break the toy. “I didn’t hear what he had said but the next thing I knew the pirate came towards me and pulled my hat down. It forced me to bend down,” he said.

“There was a neck tie and it was choking me. It was over my face and I couldn’t see the male in front of me.

"I didn’t know what he was going to do to me.” Mr Ludlow said he swung his hand around to get him to loosen Mr Brown’s grip of the hat, but accidentally hit him in the face in the process.

Mr Brown, who needed five stitches in his lip, said: “I didn’t yank it down or anything. I wasn’t aware that there was a cord around his neck.

"But it was a forceful punch from him and it shocked me.”

Mr Ludlow, of Deerhurst Close, Severn Stoke, near Worcester, denied the charge of assault by beating.

Chairman of the Magistrates Pam Wojciechowski said they could not prove that the act was intentional or reckless and found Mr Ludlow not guilty.