A female bouncer has won more than £6,000 compensation from a gay nightclub that discriminated against her because she is heterosexual.

Sharon Legg, 33, who worked on the door at Dreams nightclub in Bournemouth, said that her manager had repeatedly called her derogatory names such as 'breeder'.

Legg told an Employment Tribunal that she was frequently subjected to abuse because she was not a lesbian, with fellow doorstaff refusing to obey her instructions and constantly making life difficult for her. She was eventually dismissed without warning after a dispute with a colleague, and took her employer, Rubyz, which owns Dreams, to Employment Tribunal.

The Tribunal in Southampton awarded Legg £3,000 compensation for being harassed for being 'straight' and a further £3,222 for being unfairly dismissed. However, the Tribunal did not find that she was sacked because she was heterosexual.

Legg’s barrister, Sarah Courtney, says:

"This was an unusual case. The legislation was brought in to prevent gay and lesbian people from being harassed. I haven’t come across a case like this before."

Legg says that her manager, Scott Rhodes, began harrassing her after she was promoted to head of security:

"In the beginning I just laughed it off and decided not to say anything. Then he started saying ‘Urgh, you’re a breeder’ and that really started to grate on me. If the shoe was on the other foot and I was saying things like ‘Urgh, you’re gay’, I don’t think he would have stood for it. But he was my manager and I was the only straight woman in a gay environment so I didn’t know who to tell.

"I am friends with a lot of gay people and have had quite a lot of support from the gay community . . . I made this complaint for gay people, straight people, anyone who has ever been harassed."

Nick King, director of Rubyz, is considering appealing the Tribunal’s decision.