A lapdancing club has agreed to pay damages to an ex-employee after a manager threatened to plant drugs on him if he refused to accept redundancy.

Johnny Singh, 21, is expected to receive up to £30,000 from Spearmint Rhino after reaching a settlement with the club during an employment tribunal hearing in Reading, Berkshire.

The club stopped short of apologising to Mr Singh, from Crawley, but accepted the way it treated its "exemplary" employee was insensitive.

The tribunal had been played a tape of Stuart Dobson, general manager of the Spearmint Rhino, at Colnbrook, near Heathrow, allegedly threatening that he could find a "wrap of cocaine" in Mr Singh's pocket and fire him.

Mr Singh had claimed the company was trying to intimidate him after he had tried to highlight "inappropriate behaviour" by dancers at the company's clubs.

In a joint statement with Mr Singh, Simon Warr, European president of Spearmint Rhino, said: "Johnny Singh and the Spearmint Rhino group of companies are very pleased to announce that the matters currently before the employment tribunal have been resolved on terms acceptable to them both.

"Spearmint Rhino accepts that there were aspects of the procedure leading to Mr Singh's redundancy that could be perceived as insensitive and are happy to confirm that Mr Singh was an exemplary employee."

Mr Singh said afterwards that he felt "vindicated" but claimed the way Spearmint Rhino had treated him was "outrageous".

He added: "They threatened to plant drugs on me and call the police. I was terrified. But now they have had their comeuppance."

Neither party would comment on the size of the financial settlement and it was not revealed to the tribunal but it was understood to be about £30,000.

The tribunal panel thanked both parties for "constructively" resolving the dispute.

It heard that after a series of disagreements about "obscene" behaviour by lapdancers, Mr Singh was told Mr Dobson had decided to make him redundant.

Mr Singh, a board marker at the clubs, whose job it was to keep a record of the number of dances each dancer performed, claimed unfair dismissal.