A SEX session with a 16-year-old cost a man his hopes of becoming a taxi driver yesterday.

A judge told him he could not be trusted with drunken, drugged, and sometimes under-age girls leaving clubs and discos in the early hours.

University drop-out Irfan Nazier, 25, confessed that two years ago he and a friend had sexual intercourse in his car with a 16-year-old girl they met in a Teesside nightclub. She later told police that Nazir and his friend, aged 26, raped her, but they were acquitted at Teesside Crown Court.

Last November, when Nazir applied to Redcar and Cleveland Borough Council for a taxi driver's licence, he was rejected as being not a fit and proper person.

In April, Teesside Magistrates dismissed his appeal.

Yesterday, Judge John Walford, sitting with two magistrates at Teesside Crown Court, also refused him a private hire licence.

Speaking in his defence, Nazir said "If I was a taxi driver, I would not mix business with pleasure.

"I want to work as a taxi driver and to go back to Teesside University and do a degree."

Judge Walford, dismissing his appeal, said: "We fear that if granted a private hire licence he would take advantage of the sort of vulnerable girls who with great frequency require to be protected in a taxi late at night and in the early hours of the morning.