A REVELLER has been left with brain damage after being punched at a Leigh club, a court has heard.

Craig Bursnoll was attacked after he came out of the Vogue nightclub about 5am on March 9 last year and spent several weeks in hospital as a result.

James Pendlebury, aged 25, denied inflicting grievous bodily harm at Liverpool Crown Court.

Robert Wyn Jones, prosecuting, told a jury yesterday, Wednesday, that Mr Bursnoll, who was drunk, was waiting outside the club while his friend Jordan Ince went to the taxi company next door to get them a cab home.

He said: "He remembers a blow to his face but doesn't remember anything else until he woke up in hospital but Mr Ince saw what happened.

"He saw his friend standing outside the club on the pavement and he saw a man punch him full in the face and his legs buckled and he fell to the ground cracking his head on the pavement and there he lay motionless."

At hospital it was found that the victim had suffered a fractured skull and had bleeding on the brain and brain damage.

Meanwhile Mr Ince having heard the name Jimmy Pendlebury passed on the information to police and looked on Facebook and recognised the defendant from his photograph, claimed Mr Wyn Jones.

Pendlebury was arrested a week later and he said he had seen about the incident in the Leigh Journal and on Facebook.

When interviewed he said he had been in the nightclub and a man had been looking at his girlfriend outside the club and even spat at her.

Mr Wyn Jones said: "He said he put his arm out and pushed him and the man fell to the ground. He said it wasn't a punch it was push, it was self-defence. He said he got in a taxi with his girlfriend and went home."

CCTV footage of the incident was played to the jury.

The case continues.