A leading surgeon punched a fellow doctor during a night out at a restaurant after he became enraged at an alcohol-fuelled discussion mocking the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, a tribunal heard.

Dr David Wilkinson MBE hit Dr Lawrence King around the head and knocked off his spectacles as they and other medical colleagues were engaged in a "vigorous debate" over the political editor's "lopsided smile", it was said.

Members of the group, who were on a holiday in Spain, had been drinking for up to eight hours and were said to have been arguing at the bar as to whether Ms Kuenssberg was "attractive" enough to work for the BBC due to her "asymmetrical face", with Dr King allegedly suggesting she would look better "with a bag over her head".

As the debate intensified at the Peso Neto fusion restaurant in the Spanish port city of Bilbao, Dr Wilkinson, a 58-year old postgraduate dean for Health Education England in Yorkshire walked up to Dr King and hit him up to three times, the hearing was told.

Dr King, in his 50s, suffered a gash behind his left ear following the 7.30pm incident on June 24 last year. His glasses were also broken.