A drunk who circled a pub brawl brandishing a screwdriver and yelling his own name was labelled a “proper psycho”.

Lewis Butterfield, 27, barged in after a fight broke out at closing time outside the Shield and Dagger pub in Haydon Wick last December.

He was on a suspended sentence at the time for a drug fuelled half naked rampage through Swindon during which he tried to start a fight with a taxi driver and threatened to molest a dog.

However, it was a decidedly more contrite man who appeared before Swindon Crown Court on Wednesday via video link from HMP Bullingdon to be sentenced for affray, possession of a weapon and breaching his suspended sentence.

Prosecutor Lucy Taylor said Butterfield was one of a large group of men involved in a mass brawl outside the Shield and Dagger pub, off Thames Avenue, shortly after midnight on December 8 last year.

A small number of men, including Butterfield, had been outside the pub throwing glasses. When another drinker asked them to stop the defendant and his friends turned on him. “Laying into him is how he describes it,” Ms Taylor said.

The man’s girlfriend attempted to protect her partner, standing between him and his attackers with her arms outstretched before the man’s friends dragged him back into the pub.

Butterfield was seen to briefly go inside the pub before re-emerging and charging around the group.

He had a screwdriver in his hand and was stabbing the air shouting his name. One witness, who had a glass smash near her head, described the man as being “proper psycho”.

The court heard he has 14 convictions for 23 offences, including a three year eight month sentence in 2012 for using an imitation handgun to threaten a crown court witness.

Butterfield, of White Eagle Road, pleaded guilty to affray and possession of an offensive weapon. He denied possession of a blade and admitted the other two charges on the basis that he was not responsible for stabbing another man in the brawl.

Matthew Harbinson, defending, said the disagreement between Butterfield’s friends and the group in the pub had begun the previous day. His client had not been involved in the dispute the day before but acknowledged that he had got involved that evening.

“What Mr Butterfield says is what the courts have known about him for quite some time and that is he has the ability to hold down full-time employment,” he said. “He has a positive work ethic, but he is a wholly different animal when he consumes alcohol.”

His partner was pregnant with his third child. He had been working and had complied with a curfew imposed as a condition of his suspended sentence last year.

Jailing him for 17 months for the affray and adding another month for the breach of the suspended sentence, Judge Peter Crabtree said: “You ran around manically, kicking and punching out indiscriminately and shouting, it seems, ‘I’m Lewis Butterfield’.”