DRUNKARD Audrey Gill disrupted a Sunday evening service at the Lighthouse Church in Ely when she hurled foul abuse at members of the congregation. The pensioner then fell and injured her head – and she continued to shout and swear when paramedics and the

DRUNKARD Audrey Gill disrupted a Sunday evening service at the Lighthouse Church in Ely when she hurled foul abuse at members of the congregation.

The pensioner then fell and injured her head - and she continued to shout and swear when paramedics and the police arrived.

South African Gill - who has more than 50 previous convictions and was declared an habitual drunkard by magistrates last year - appeared before Ely magistrates on Thursday, when she admitted a charge of drunk and disorderly.

Paramedics were called to the Lighthouse Church in Lynn Road half way through the evening service on February 21, said prosecutor Penny Cannon.

"They had received a report that a lady had fallen and hit her head while drunk," she explained. "Gill continued to disrupt the church service, and paramedics called the police. She was clearly intoxicated and unsteady on her feet."

Sixty-one-year-old Gill, of Lantern Court, High Street, Ely, swore at three members of the church congregation, and when police approached her, she continued to be verbally abusive.

In March of last year, Gill admitted an offence of racially aggravated threatening behaviour, committed when she made racial remarks when drunk.

The following month, Ely magistrates declared Gill to be a habitual drunkard, making it an offence for her to buy alcohol for three years. At that hearing she had admitted being drunk and disorderly at Ely Police Station, when she threw a paper cup at a member of the public who had come in to report an incident.

Last year Gill served a 12-week jail sentence for a string of alcohol related offences, including being drunk on the highway, drunk and disorderly, and a racially aggravated public order offence.

This week she told Ely magistrates: "I need to get on with my life, I am stupid. I am a white South African, and I want to go home, I miss my home. I have been here since 2003."

The court fined Gill �120 with �85 costs and a �15 surcharge.