Barton: I'm not afraid of going to jail

Joey Barton insists he is not afraid to go to prison should he be found guilty of assaulting former Manchester City team-mate Ousmane Dabo.

Barton is expected to go on trial in June for assault occasioning actual bodily harm on Dabo but the Newcastle and England midfielder maintains his innocence.

Talking on BBC's Inside Sport, to be broadcast tonight, Barton says: "If you go to prison for defending yourself then, yes, I suppose I'll have to think about it.

"I don't care, it doesn't scare me at all because I've done nothing wrong. I can go home and sleep at night and know I've done what I thought was right. I don't think I'm a bad person. If the incidents I've been involved in had been to anyone other than a Premier League footballer, I don't think they'd even be mentioned. It was something that I've seen five, six, seven times since I've been a professional footballer.

But nobody cares whether I'm innocent or guilty, nobody cares. I'm already guilty before I've been sat in front of a judge, that's the disappointing thing. It's my reputation. It's my fault I've got that reputation but you shouldn't be slaughtered for trying to make yourself a better person. One day I will get to speak about the full facts."

Barton, who criticised the vicious element among Newcastle's support at the weekend, revealed he had not spoken to his brother Michael, who was convicted of killing Liverpool teenager Anthony Walker, since he was 14 and expressed his heartbreak over having to explain newspaper headlines to his grandmother, who has cancer.

He said: 'She's in hospital and obviously she's worried about me because I'm up here and she's saying, "Everything all right?" 'It's the least of her worries. It kills me the fact she's got to read that and then decipher whether or not I've done right or wrong.

'You know she doesn't like reading stuff like that because in her eyes I'll always be an angel. I'll always be a great kid because she knows the person I am.'