A CONVICTED paedophile who was discovered working at a school in Thailand is set to be kicked out of the country after being arrested.

Alan Smith, 53, is being held at an immigration detention centre in Bangkok awaiting deportation after police swooped.

Smith, formerly of Carter Street, Accrington, was jailed for abusing a 14-year-old girl in August 2005 - but got a job at a school near Bangkok, Thailand, last year.

Despite being on the sex offenders register, which forbids him to work with children in this country, UK authorities could not stop him in his role teaching 10 to 15-year-olds.

Smith said that he had been told by the teaching agency that employed him that he must resign.

And now he is being held by immigration officials.

Police Colonel Jarut Surattuyaporn said he has now been blacklisted from the country.

But a decision has yet to be made on whether to prosecute Smith for using false documents to get a job as a teacher and obtain a work permit.

Sudarat Sereewat of the Thai government's child protection unit said: "We are glad this man has been removed from the school."

He said Smith will be sent back to Britain but they he would have to raise the cash himself for the air fare home.

Before Christmas Smith said that he had now spilt from his new Thai bride Pach, 25, and was preparing to come back to Accrington because he had no money and no job.

He said: "My wife won't come with me because she knows how I have been treated in England and hates the country.

"As far as she is concerned it is a vile and disgusting place."

Officers from the national Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre said they told the Thai authorities "several times" Smith was a convicted child sex offender when he went there in late 2006 but nothing was done.

Smith, who met his wife shortly after arriving in Thailand and married her in February, said he was not a paedophile and was "giving something back" by teaching disadvantaged children.

Smith, who acted as Accrington Stanley's mascot Stan the Monkey before his conviction and also worked as a Butlins Redcoat, was teaching English at the Nongyai temple school set in the grounds of a Buddhist monastery 20 miles north of Bangkok.

He pleaded guilty to sexual activity with a child after an incident in the kitchen of a pub where he worked in 2005.

He was sent to prison for teo months and was placed on the sex offenders register for seven years for pulling the girl's knickers from under her trousers and touching her on the back.

The register is intended to protect the public but cannot be enforced abroad by UK authorities.