Tweed jailed for assault

Jade Goody's widower Jack Tweed has today been jailed for 12 weeks for assaulting a taxi driver.

The 21-year-old, of Buckhurst Hill, Essex, showed no emotion as magistrates in Harlow passed an immediate term of imprisonment.

Tweed, whose reality television star wife died from cancer last month, was found guilty of attacking Stephen Wilkins in Epping, Essex, last May following a trial at Epping Magistrates' Court in March.

Magistrates chairwoman Margaret Webb told Tweed the bench had considered his "change in personal circumstances" in passing the sentence.

"We have borne in mind the recent change in your personal circumstances and have reflected this in the length of the sentence, which would otherwise have been 18 weeks," she said.

Before being handcuffed and led to the cells of the court, Tweed was told he would spend half of his sentence behind bars before being freed on licence. He was ordered to pay prosecution costs of £455 (€511.10) and £200 (€224.66) to Mr Wilkins.

The court heard that Tweed attacked Mr Wilkins following a night out in Epping in May 2008. He committed the offence while on bail for a separate offence of hitting a 16-year-old boy with a golf club.

Tweed denied the assault, in Ongar, Essex, but was jailed for 18 months in September after being found guilty following a trial.

His lawyer, Tania Panagiotopoulou, mitigating, told the court that Tweed was "barely 18" at the time of the offence, in December 2006.

She accepted this was an "aggravating" feature and had to be considered in sentencing him for his latest crime.