It was meant to be a crude joke to humiliate a businessman after a late night row.

But after James Redmile-Gordon brandished a 2 kilo fire extinguisher during a scuffle - a father-of-two lay fatally injured from a fractured skull.

Yesterday a jury at Lewes Crown Court cleared the 29-year-old of the murder of Ovidiu Pop, 28, but convicted him of manslaughter.

During his trial Redmile-Gordon denied he had intended to harm Mr Pop who died days after being hit on the head while on a night out in Brighton in August last year.

He claimed he only intended to spray Mr Pop with the canister for a joke, but while trying to ward off a punch from Mr Pop, he hit him on the head with the heavy metal canister.

The jury took just over two hours to return their unanimous verdict.

Redmile-Gordon, formerly of Cromwell Road, Hove, and now of Charlwood, Horley, was remanded in custody until June 19 when he will be sentenced.

Members of Mr Pop's family sat each day in the public gallery throughout the trial, which lasted nearly three weeks.

Mr Pop, of Greenleas, Hove, was a Romanian national who ran a groundworks firm in Portslade, which employed 60 people.

He had been out with friends on the night of August 16 last year and about 5am the following morning he left the Honey Club on the seafront and was walking along Kings Road heading for another bar when a confrontation started with Redmile-Gordon, who was with a group of his friends waiting at a bus stop for a friend to collect them to take them home.

Mr Pop was alleged to have made a vulgar comment towards a girl in Redmile-Gordon's group which sparked an exchange of words.

When his friend arrived in his Nissan Navara, Redmile-Gordon, who had been drinking and taking drugs, picked up the fire extinguisher from the seat pocket and followed after Mr Pop.

Mr Pop, who suffered a fractured skull, was taken to the Royal Sussex County Hospital, in Brighton, before being transferred to the Hurstwood Park neurological centre, at Haywards Heath, where he died on August 25 without gaining consciousness.

The canister was later dumped in a rubbish bin and found by police after hours of searching at the city's amenity tip.