A bungling burglar referred to himself as 'a divvy' when he caused £20,000 of flooding damage to the disused pub below the flat where he lived. Nottingham Crown Court was told how Darren Wilkinson was only likely to make £50 from the scrap metal he decided to steal from the former Colonel Burnaby pub in Radford. But when police went to his address above the former Hartley Road boozer, they found what he took hidden under some clothes and arrested the 52-year-old. Dominic Shelley, his barrister, told the hearing: “He accepts causing some of the flooding but not all of it and all for scrap metal which would have made him £50 on a good day. “He said to me ‘it was a stupid thing to do, I am a divvy, I’m an idiot, I have been 10 years crime free and this is what I did’.” Louise Howard, prosecuting, said the break-in took place on April 3, this year. She said the police were called to reports of a burglary and, when they arrived, found the former pub partly flooded. The prosecutor said: “When the police searched Mr Wilkinson's flat, which was directly above the pub, they found a crowbar, a lump hammer and copper piping partially hidden under some clothes. There is a statement from the manager or owner who says the flooding caused £20,000 of damage.” Wilkinson, a father who has 35 previous convictions for 60 offences, pleaded guilty to burglary and has spent the past three weeks on remand at HMP Nottingham where his barrister told the hearing his client had witnessed “assaults, bullying, fighting and a stabbing”. His partner spent all morning sitting in the public gallery inside courtroom three waiting for his case to be called on. Handing him a nine-month jail term, suspended for 18 months, Judge Stuart Rafferty KC said: “Stupidity, and I use that word very rarely in a criminal court, is burgling premises directly below where you live and taking the swag upstairs and when the police arrive - as of course they were going to - hiding the measly haul you had taken under some clothes in the hope they would not find them. “You have almost gone past stupidity and into brainlessness now. Sometimes you do not miss the thing that means most until you have lost it. “And the lady who has been sitting here all morning in court listening to me wittering on about other cases is here to support you. If that does not make you lucky I don’t know what does because she sees you in a different way to the way the court does because of course before this blip you had been living an honest life doing well. “When you get out the first thing you should do is apologise to your wife and promise her and your children you will never let them down again.”