A chef who was sacked for sending pornographic e-mails at work has told an industrial tribunal he did not realise he was doing anything wrong.

Bruce Sangster, 49, of Haslingfield, Cambridge, was dismissed in January after nine years at the European headquarters of investment bank Lehman Brothers in Canary Wharf, London.

He told the tribunal on Thursday that he had not been aware of the company's zero-tolerance policy on emails and added that many top chefs shared "a taste for crude humour".

He said: "In my experience of 34 years as a chef I have seen a lot of this sort of thing get handed around.

Strippers hired

"In the chef's world that's what happens."

Mr Sangster, who was named National Chef of the Year by the Craft Guild of Chefs two years ago, said he had never seen the company policy and did not realise he was doing anything wrong.

In a written statement previously seen by the tribunal, the chef said he had been e-mailed jokes and pictures by friends outside the company.

It read: "I would describe these as bawdy chefs' humour and, although they were often crude and sexual in nature, I would not describe them as pornographic because they were clearly designed to amuse, rather than to arouse."

The tribunal had previously heard that Lehman Brothers had hired strippers to entertain kitchen staff at its London office on Mr Sangster's first day there as a chef.