A MAN who robbed a betting shop, saying he had a gun in his pocket, has been jailed for two years and eight months.

John Guthrie threatened to shoot a betting shop manager in Ladbrokes during a robbery at the town centre branch in January.

He had scribbled out a note saying he was armed with a gun and demanding the cash be handed over.

But when the lone Ladbrokes worker tried to stall him the 28-year-old raider shouted: ‘I’ll shoot you if you don’t hand over the money’.

Rob Welling, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court that Kelvin Hall was alone in the Commercial Road branch on the evening of Monday, January 5 when the incident happened.

Just before 8.30pm, when business was very quiet, the defendant walked in with his coat up over his neckline and a woolly hat pulled down to his eyelids.

He walked up to the counter, which has a glass partition, and placed a handwritten note up against it.

Mr Hall told police it read: "Put your hands up. I have a gun in my pocket.

"Give me all of the ****ing money".

Although there was further writing on the piece of paper, the victim did not read on and was unsure whether the raider was serious.

Trying to bluff it out, the manager said there was a policemen in the toilet, but Guthrie replied: "This is no ****ing joke. I’ll shoot you if you don’t hand over the money".

When he tried to move towards the security button Guthrie again told him to put his hands up, one of which was holding a bundle of cash.

The robber tried to thrust his arm under the screen, but couldn’t reach the money, so the manager took the chance to dial 999.

Mr Hall also put a chair behind the door to the front of the shop, but with three or four hard kicks the intruder forced it open.

Guthrie grabbed a scanning machine and threw it at Mr Hall, but it didn’t reach him as it was plugged in, then snatched £2,175 and fled from the shop.

Two days later he handed himself in at a police station in Oxfordshire and admitted what had happened, but at that stage denied mentioning a gun.

Guthrie, of Culvery Court, pleaded guilty to a charge of robbery. The court heard he had a history of crime and was jailed for four years for a serious assault in 2008.

Ronan McCann, defending, said his client had owed money to drug dealers in Reading and used what he had taken to pay them off.

He said he had gone to a shop to buy a pen shortly before the raid and wrote the note on a scrap of paper he had found. Guthrie had worked as a self-employed civil engineer and had a partner and young son.

However following the suicide of an uncle a few years ago he had turned to drugs which led to running up the debts.

Jailing him for 32 months, Judge Peter Blair QC said: “I am sentencing you for a serious offence: robbery of a shop at night time."

“It is a business where a single member of staff was on duty and therefore vulnerable as a result.

“You got away with over £2,000 in cash and there had been some degree of planning. There was the threat of a gun.”