A PRESTONPANS man has admitted a charge of speaking to a woman he had been banned from approaching.

Darren Watters of McLachlan Gardens had been released on bail in March for a previous offence and ordered not to contact or approach the woman.

But just two weeks after the court order was handed down, Watters was present at the town’s Royal British Legion club when he spotted her enter with two friends.

The three women saw that Watters was at the club and had made their way upstairs to avoid him. But he soon followed and approached the table of women while “highly intoxicated”.

Watters, 33, told them they were “nobodies” and the women said that they had felt threatened by his demeanour.

He left the Royal British Legion club shortly after and the police were called.

The case was due to go to trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last Tuesday and initially solicitor Haloon Malik asked for an adjournment as his client had not been granted legal aid.

But following a short break, Mr Malik told the court the legal aid issue had been resolved and Watters was now pleading guilty to an amended charge.

Mr Malik said that his client lived alone, had recently lost his position at a local fishmongers and currently had no income.

Mr Malik said Watters had blamed his heavy drinking on “a spiral of depression” and was using alcohol, along with prescribed medication, to self-medicate a condition of tendonitis in his leg.

Watters had added he had “faint recollection” of the events that took place that evening at the Prestonpans club.

Sheriff Katherine Mackie deferred sentence on Watters to July 7 for the preparation of reports and for a non-harassment order assessment to take place.

Watters pleaded guilty to breaking a court order not to contact or approach the woman by approaching and speaking to her at the Royal British Legion, Prestonpans, on March 26 this year.