Former Love Island winner Jack Fincham has won an appeal against his prison sentence for two dangerous dog offences.

Fincham, 32, was sentenced to six weeks imprisonment at Southend Magistrates’ Court on 29 January after pleading guilty to two counts of having a dangerously out-of-control black cane corso.

But within hours of the sentencing, he was released on conditional bail and vowed to appeal it.

On Friday, Fincham, who won the ITV dating show with Dani Dyer in 2018, was told by a judge at Basildon Crown Court that the original sentence had not been “just in the circumstances”.

Instead, Judge Samantha Leigh set aside the custodial sentence and extended a suspended sentence he was given in March last year for two unrelated offences in 2023 – drug driving and fraudulent use of a registered trademark.

The order of 12 weeks custody – suspended for 18 months – has been lengthened by three months, Judge Leigh told the court.

The court heard previously that Fincham’s dog, Elvis, bit and injured the arm of a runner named Robert Sudell in Swanley, Kent, in September 2022.

Separately in June 2024, the dog grabbed a woman’s leg in Fincham’s hometown of Grays, Essex. It left no injury but the animal was said to be out of control.

Fincham attended a police interview of his own volition that month, when he received a caution and was told to keep the dog muzzled.

Prosecuting, Hannah Steventon said police then attended a hotel in August 2024 following reports the dog had been in a public pool area and was not on a lead or muzzled.

Defending, Richard Cooper, said Fincham had chosen the hotel specifically because it was advertised as “dog-friendly” online.

He then “let him off the lead at the swimming pool”, broadcasting the scene to his social media followers, “of which there are about two million”, he said.

Judge Leigh described this as “his own stupidity”.

Read more from Sky News
Drag queen died after taking ketamine
Actress ‘shell-shocked’ at being told to ‘bend over’
Stalker who ‘terrified’ Cheryl jailed

As part of the original sentence, Fincham was ordered to pay £3,680, including £2,000 in kennelling costs, a fine of £961, and £200 in compensation to Mr Sudell.

His lawyer said he had made “remarkable progress” since his last court appearance, “returning to a nine-to-five job” and boxing.

The judge warned him to be “very careful now”.

A swathe of celebrities including Sir Stephen Fry and Succession star Brian Cox have urged the government to reverse its “shameful” cuts to welfare.

Sir Stephen said the cuts should not be targeted at “the most vulnerable and overlooked of all our population”, while Mr Cox recalled his own experience of child poverty and argued the plans would “have a lasting impact on the lives of so many people already finding it difficult to afford life’s essentials”.

They were joined in their criticism by actor Stanley Tucci, who branded the plans “wrong” and said they would force parents in disabled families to “skip meals so that they can feed their children”.

Politics latest: PM demands ‘military plans’ for Ukraine

The celebrities’ intervention comes after Sir Keir Starmer defended his government’s shakeup to the welfare system, designed to shave £5bn from the disability benefits bill for working-age people, which is set to balloon to £75bn by the end of the decade.

The prime minister has branded the current system “morally and economically indefensible” and said the government cannot simply “shrug its shoulders” and pretend the welfare system is “progressive”.

He told Sky News political correspondent Serena Barker-Singh that he understands why some of his backbenchers are uncomfortable, referencing his late mother, who was “very ill all her life” and brother who recently died of cancer.

But he said it was “morally indefensible that a million young people are going essentially from education on to benefits”.

“All the evidence shows if young people are in that position and so early in their lives, they’re going to find it really difficult ever to get out of that,” he added.

“There aren’t many people who genuinely argue the status quo is working,” Sir Keir added.

However, the changes to the system – which will make it harder to qualify for the main disability benefit, the personal independence payment (Pip), have drawn strong criticism from charities and thinktanks.

The Resolution Foundation thinktank said the tightening of Pip eligibility would mean between 800,000 and 1.2 million people losing support of between £4,200 and £6,300 per year by the end of the decade.

The Trussell Trust, which runs food banks across the country, said around three-quarters of the people referred to one of its services live in a household where someone is disabled.

It warned the measures will have a “significant impact on people who are already facing hunger and hardship”.

And Comedian Rosie Jones, who has cerebral palsy, said the cuts will “only deepen the hardship” disabled people are already facing.

“Disabled people are scared of what the future holds if there’s cuts to disability payments, as they are already not enough to cover life’s essentials,” she said.

Read more:
What is PIP?
Key welfare changes explained

A Department for Work and Pensions spokesperson said: “Our reforms will build a social security system that’s fairer, more sustainable and fit for the future – so it can always be there for those with the greatest needs to live with the dignity and support they deserve.

“Helping people into good work is at the heart of our approach to tackling poverty and inequality, but the broken social security system we inherited is failing people who can and have the potential to work, as well as the people it’s meant to be there for.

“That’s why we’re introducing a new premium and ending reassessments for those who will never be able to work to improve the safety net for them, while delivering a £1bn employment support package to break down barriers for disabled people into work.

“We’re also rebalancing Universal Credit payment levels so the benefit’s main rate rises above inflation for the first time in a boost for working families.”

An actress who worked in a film directed by Noel Clarke said she felt “shell-shocked” when he asked her to “bend over further” during a scene where she was naked from the waist down, the High Court has heard.

The woman, known only as Mila, gave evidence on Thursday in Clarke’s legal case against Guardian News and Media (GNM).

Mila told the court that although she felt uncomfortable about filming the nude scene, she needed the work.

In her witness statement, she said: “Noel was telling me to bend over, repeating things like ‘bend over further, come on’, and ‘do it properly’.

“I was clearly very uncomfortable and resisting doing this, I was doing the strip tease as requested and this extra request did not feel necessary.

“He repeated these comments until I bent over further and further until I was bent completely over with my bum in the air.”

Read more from Sky News:
How has Trump – the ‘dealmaker’ – done on foreign policy?
Jack Draper: The 6ft 4in British left-hander with tennis in his blood

Mila added that she felt “hugely embarrassed, blindsided and shell shocked” by the filming.

Mila also said that while Clarke’s tone “might have sounded jovial to some, it was very persistent”.

Philip Williams, for Clarke, asked her: “Noel’s tone was encouraging and jovial, that is why you put it in, because others knew it was jovial.”

Mila replied: “He was masking his persistent direction.

“If he had been aggressive, or really, really shouting at me, that would have been hard to get away with.”

Clarke, 49, is suing the publisher of the Guardian newspaper over seven articles and a podcast, including an article in April 2021 that said 20 women who knew him professionally had come forward with allegations of misconduct.

He denies the allegations, while GNM is defending its reporting as being both true and in the public interest.

In Mila’s witness statement, she said she later worked on another project with Clarke, but this had no sex scenes.

Some time after this she received a message from Clarke “out of the blue”, asking if they could speak, she said.

Mila said that during the call he asked her if they “were cool” in relation to the first film they worked on.

The actress said in her statement: “I told him that I was not ok with it and that I had felt very uncomfortable at various points and that I would not let something like that happen to me again.

“Noel said he was sorry if he had made me feel uncomfortable.

“He was talking about how becoming a father had made him reflect and that he wanted to raise his sons to be upstanding young men. He said he was ringing round people to apologise.”

She added that he seemed “panicked” on the call, and it seemed to her that “his purpose was either fishing to see whether I was unhappy about his treatment of me on the film, or he was trying to cover his tracks in some way”.

Clarke’s denial

Clarke denies the allegations Mila has made, and in his witness statement, said: “The reiteration of the scene is highly distorted and exaggerated.

“This scene was not filmed to procure any kind of personal or sexual gratification, nor was that ever the intention.”

He added: “I did not comment in the way pleaded, and did not ask Mila to bend over in any way which made her uncomfortable, or in a way which was not true to the script.”

In relation to the phone call, Clarke said he got in contact with Mila after being made aware of comments she had made about her experience filming the nude scene.

He added: “I apologised for any hardship she may have felt or if, in retrospect, Mila felt uncomfortable.

“I confirmed that no untoward behaviour had been engaged in, and reassured her that protocol had been followed by the crew at all times.

“Mila accepted my apology, admitting that in retrospect, she had changed her mind about her involvement in the scene, and felt uncomfortable taking part in an explicit scene.”

The hearing before Mrs Justice Steyn is due to conclude in April, with a decision expected in writing at a later date.