A company chef stole more than £63,000 from a cash machine because he was ‘confused about his sexuality’.

Stephen Lindop was manager at Wythenshawe Forum’s cafe when he began helping himself to wads of banknotes which he squandered on a flamboyant lifestyle, Manchester Crown Court heard.

When he applied for the job at the south Manchester civic centre, he tricked cafe operators Taylor Shaw with a reference from a pal - and failed to tell them that just two weeks earlier he had been given a suspended sentence for stealing more than £50,000 from a pub he had run in Bristol.

After the offences came to light, Lindop was sacked - but got a job as a chef at cosmetics firm L’Oreal’s Trafford Park site, stealing nearly £5,000 from vending machines.

The 35-year-old, of Warwick Gate House, Old Trafford, has now been jailed for three years.

His barrister said crime had allowed him to live a lifestyle beyond his means as he battled personal demons.

Simon Gray, defending, said Lindop had since turned his back on his ‘meaningless’ high-spending lifestyle, and had been living modestly off the £26,000 he earned as head chef at Kelloggs, Trafford Park, where he worked until he was finally locked up.

Mr Gray said: “He pinpoints his own difficulties in dealing with his sexuality throughout his 20s, becoming a person he didn’t particularly like.

“Lacking in confidence, feeling low in self-esteem, he began to steal to fund a lifestyle he couldn’t afford.

"Perhaps to surround himself with people he thought were better than him, or mask who he really was.

"He has hidden behind this lifestyle and therefore hidden from himself. He says over the last few years he has finally opened up to who he is, and realised the lifestyle he was living was of no true value.”

Henry Blackshaw, prosecuting, told the court that Lindop was taken on at the Forum cafe in January 2011, and was solely responsible for replenishing the cash machine with the takings.

Due to the ‘high degree of trust’ placed in him - and the firm’s financial manager being on sick leave - Lindop’s thefts went undetected for seven months.

By that time - January 2012 - his greed had escalated to the point he was stealing more than £2,000 a week.

Lindop admitted theft, asking for the vending machine thefts and an offence of furnishing false details to be taken into consideration.

Mr Recorder Ainsworth, sentencing, said the Forum cafe theft was ‘aggravated’ by the fact he ‘named other people as possible suspects’ when arrested.