A man who was caught with his pants down in a sauna claimed to have been ‘warming up his chicken’, a court has heard. Xin Zhang had been for a swim at a university leisure centre when a woman noticed him staring at her from the sauna.

The 59-year-old had shorts ‘down to his knees’ and was touching himself at the time, it is claimed. Prosecutors said he had become ‘aroused’ by the feeling of the pool jets on his bottom.

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He said Zhang had ‘done some weird stuff previously’ including ‘pulling his shorts down’ near ‘air vents at the side of the pool’ but that management had said previously they ‘didn’t have enough evidence to pull him in and to talk to him about it.’

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A member of management who spoke to him told the court that when he asked Zhang about what he was doing he said ‘my chicken’ and ‘gestured with his hands.’ He said he took that to mean that he was ‘adjusting himself.’

Zhang, of Foundry Lane in Manchester, told police that ‘chicken is what I call my genitals.’ He told officers in his interview: "I was adjusting the inner layer of my shorts, because of my eczema I have them loose.’

In his basis of plea given at court, Zhang said he was ‘warming’ his privates as he was cold. He ‘denied he was masturbating but conceded it may have looked like that for anyone watching,’ the court was told.

Giving evidence himself, he said that he lay down in the sauna as he was ‘cold, tired and hungry.’ Speaking through a Mandarin interpreter, he claimed it was customers who set the temperature in the sauna.

He said: "I sat there for about seven or eight minutes and I still felt cold. “I realised my waistband had been tied too tight and I loosened my waistband.”

He said after looking at his privates, he feared that ‘there might be some kind of illness causing a problem.’ “I was trying to warm it up” he said before he heard ‘knocking on the windows.’