A MOTORIST likened to a prostitute's 'guardian angel', was convicted of kerb crawling yesterday.

Security guard Alan Raine, 42, from Eldon, near Bishop Auckland, was found guilty after being caught on Middlesbrough town centre's closed-circuit television security system as he picked up a prostitute in his car.

Police Sergeant David Mean, who was monitoring the camera system at the time, told Teesside magistrates: "Prostitution is an immense problem and we are working very closely with the residents of St Hilda's and the business community, trying to stem prostitution together with drugs and crime."

Raine told PC Caroline Jack that he had been seeking two sexual services from the prostitute.

But at Teesside Magistrates' Court yesterday he denied soliciting a woman for prostitution on March 27.

Raine told the bench that he had been "seeing" the woman and was still doing so.

He claimed that he was helping her to fight her drug addiction and to pay off a loan shark.

Ian Bradshaw, prosecuting, told Raine: "You seem to have been a guardian angel to this young woman for some considerable time.

"But unlike William Gladstone, you were not out to do social work with this woman, you were out for one thing only - sex."

Raine of Pasture Row, Eldon, was fined £250 and £75 costs.