A ‘NOTORIOUS’ sex offender obsessed with his iPhone penned a two-page letter to a judge claiming he could not live without it.

‘Spoilt’ Clinton Townsend was caught using online dating service Plenty of Fish despite being forbidden from owning a phone with internet access and going on social networking sites.

The 23-year-old, who was released from jail last February after serving time for child sex offences, claimed his life was ‘not worth living’ unless he could have an iPhone.

Sentencing Townsend at Oxford Crown Court on Friday, Judge Maria Lamb said: “However joined at the hip that you are to that phone, it’s only a phone – grow up. You flouted another court order because you cannot live without a phone.

“There’s more to life than an iPhone. You meet people face-to-face, who are over-age, and do it the old-fashioned way.”

The convict was driving in Oxford Road, Witney, when he was stopped by police and caught with his Apple iPhone 6s on December 15 last year, prosecutor Julian Lynch said.

Officers spotted notifications from the online dating site but Townsend refused to reveal the mobile’s pin code, blocking police from examining further.

The former Oxford Boxing Academy boxer was locked up for five years after being convicted of engaging in sexual activity with a child and making indecent images in 2014, and has also been convicted of repeatedly breaching court orders handed to him.

Defence barrister Peter Du Feu said Townsend, who admitted breaching the sexual harm prevention order, bought the phone just days after being released from jail.

He added: “He could not bear the lack of contact with a modern phone. [There is] no sign of any further illicit contact but an almost addiction to having one of these modern phones with him.”

The defendant, who lived a ‘privileged’ life with his parents, does not have an interest in underage girls anymore, Mr Du Feu claimed.

Townsend, of Field Assarts, Witney, sometimes earned £1,000 a week as a bricklayer after leaving prison but was later declared bankrupt.

His parents also refused to replace a car they bought for him after he crashed it, the court heard.

The barrister went on to tell the court Townsend was recalled to prison after breaching the order and is not due for release until August 2018 but will meet with the parole board later this year.

Judge Lamb, who ordered forfeiture and destruction of the phone, handed Townsend a 16-month sentence, which will run concurrently to his current jail term, and told him the parole board would decide when it is safe to release him back into the community.