A man who punched James Lee Williams AKA drag queen star The Vivienne in the head at McDonald’s claims he had intended their interaction to just be ‘banter’.

Alan Whitfield, 51, has been convicted of a homophobic hate crime, but says he was just bantering his victim because he thought he looked like an Oompa Loompa from Charlie And The Chocolate Factory.

Giving evidence at Liverpool Magistrates’ Court, Williams said he was subjected to a ‘barrage of abuse’ from Whitfield after entering the McDonald’s on Edge Lane in Liverpool earlier this year.

“‘He carried on, then after the fourth “look at the state of you” I said “look at the state of you”, I said ‘look at the state of your face’, to which he said ‘I’ve got skin cancer’ and then punched me straight in the face.”

Banter, indeed.

He continued: “There were countless other people in the branch of McDonald’s that day, why didn’t he start on anyone else? Why did he choose to publicly humiliate me and then hit me, if it wasn’t for my image or me being quite evidently gay?”

Well, I guess that’s a fair point, but Whitfield insists he picked on Williams because of his dyed green hair, and didn’t even realise he was homosexual, or see the handbag he was carrying.

He had asked him: “What have you come as, an Oompa Loompa?”, and only turned physical after Williams pointed out the marks on his face from skin cancer.

Williams accepted pointing out marks on Whitfield’s face and responding when he told him he had skin cancer by saying: ‘Made up for you.’

He told the court: ‘For that I truly apologise, that must have hurt, that was never intended.’

In the end, the court decided that Whitfield’s attack on Williams was motivated by homophobia, and he will be sentenced in the new year. Outside the court, Whitfield said:  ‘Joke. Bulls**t. Where’s the hate crime for my cancer?’

Well, maybe if he’d been the one to get punched…

For the time all hell broke loose at Drag Queen Story Hour in Reading, click HERE.