Calling a black police officer a ‘gorilla’ is not racist

A former restaurant worker who called a black policeman a ‘gorilla’ has been cleared of racial abuse after magistrates found the word simply referred to the officer’s ‘brutish strength.’ Rupert Pendered, 56, was an employee at the Chipping Forecast, an upmarket fish and chip eaterie which had branches in Soho and Notting Hill. He drunkenly attacked business owner Timothy Haigh, his partner of 20 years in their Ladbroke Gardens flat on 20 December last year. During the furious bust-up he…