A councillor has apologised after sending offensive jokes to members of the public.

Brighton and Hove City Councillor Lynda Hyde, admits she often sends funnies to friends and colleagues from her official email account.

But included in one list titled “Tommy Cooper style jokes”

were a number of gags about non-English speaking doctors and pantomime actors being sexually abused.

After a copy was shown to The Argus, the representative for Rottingdean Coastal and deputy planning chairman apologised and admitted it was an “oversight” on her behalf.

Coun Hyde, who was first elected in 1999, said: “From what I remember of this particular email, it contained a long list of jokes, not all of which I read.

“A couple of the jokes at the beginning of the email were quite amusing and so I forwarded them on to a few friends and colleagues.

“If I had been aware of the nature of the jokes further down the email I would have deleted the whole thing and would not have forwarded it to anybody."

Labour and Co-op councillor Warren Morgan said: “This kind of humour belongs in the bad old days of the 1970s.

There is no place for this kind of racist, homophobic, disrespectful and divisive material in today’s society."