BRITAIN’s first champion of ITV’s show Gladiators and his wife were unfairly dismissed and not paid the national minimum wage at a local sport club, an employment tribunal has ruled.

Weininger Irwin, 60, and Janice Francis-Irwin agreed to collectively be paid £30,000 to manage Ilford Sport Club in east London alongside its late former chairman George Hogarth in July 2015.

Judges found they were paid £7.69 per hour for an average of 75 hours per week in the two years ending December 2020.

East London Hearing Centre heard this was less than the National Minimum Wage which was £7.83ph in the 2018/19 financial year, rising to £8.21ph and £8.72 in the following years.

Employment Judge Andrew Sugarman said their claims for not being paid their full contractual wage or the national minimum wage for that period were not made within a legal time limit but would have otherwise been upheld.

The tribunal also heard they made three whistle-blowing claims against the indebted not-for-profit before being made redundant during the first lockdown in August 2020.

EJ Sugarman said it was a “difficult issue” but the club had shown the primary reason for their dismissal was redundancy, ruling that they were owed two weeks’ wages, notice and holiday pay.

A redundancy appeal had found they “were dismissed without due process” and his judgement found had the club “acted fairly it would have retained both claimants throughout August and September but the redundancy consultation process would have concluded in mid-October.

“The protected disclosures made by the claimants started a long time before their dismissal and there is no evidence of any move to dismiss them until August 2020.

“Although we found this a difficult issue, we have concluded that the respondent has established that the sole or principal reason for the dismissal was redundancy and not the protected disclosures the claimants had made.”

The Irwins had claimed against Mr Hogarth including £1,000 that went missing from a £10,000 lottery grant to support the Ageless Teenagers Project in aid to Windrush generation “seniors” in May 2018.

They also claimed “odd transactions” had been carried out to create a false impression of the club’s financial health and that a European regional development grant of £5,000 was improperly used to cover its bills.

Compensation is to be agreed at another date. Both parties were contacted for comment.