A thug has lost his appeal against his two-year jail term for a sustained and vicious New Year’s Day attack.

Bobby Lee Chadwick kicked and stamped on his victim’s head until he lost consciousness.

Chadwick, 23, had pleaded not guilty to a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm but his claim of self-defence was rejected by the jury and he was jailed for two years with one-year on licence.

Trial judge Deemster Alastair Montgomerie said it was ’more by luck than design’ that victim James Lees, who was kicked four times in the head while he was on the ground and unable to defend himself, did not suffer greater injuries.

Chadwick appealed against the sentence, his lawyer Steve Wood arguing it was ’manifestly excessive’.

He accepted that a custodial sentence was inevitable but it should have been one of 18 months.

Mr Wood submitted that Deemster Montgomerie erred in placing too much reliance on the appellant’s use of a highly offensive racist phrase before assaulting Mr Lees.

He argued that the words ’did not constitute racial abuse because the victim was Caucasian and was frequently referred to in such terms by way of a nickname’.

But the appeal court rejected that claim.

They said: ’In our judgment it matters not that Mr Lees was Caucasian.

’The words used were racist abuse, they were used towards a man who was unfortunately regularly submitted to such abuse because he was perceived to look foreign and the interval of time between the words being used and the assault was relatively minimal.’

Judge of Appeal Geoffrey Tattersall QC and First Deemster David Doyle said they were ’entirely satisfied’ that the sentence of two years’ custody was justified.

’Those who commit serious offences of violence must realise that they are likely to result in an immediate loss of liberty,’ they concluded in their judgment.

The attack happened at 2am on January 1 last year on a small landing midway down the stairs at the Northcroft Apartments in Castletown after Mr Lees and a friend returned from Douglas after celebrating the New Year.

The victim sustained extensive bruising and abrasions over his head, face and neck including a swollen black eye.

The court heard that Chadwick had a number of convictions for offences of assault and causing grievous bodily harm, theft, resisting arrest and public order offences.

He had been given suspended sentences for the assaults, made the subject of a probation order which he breached and had then been sentenced to 28 days’ custody.