A POLICE officer's 26-year career is in ruins after he was found guilty of pushing his wife backwards over a bar at a drunken work night out.

Gordon Wilson, 45, of Police Scotland's Forth Valley division, flew into a rage after spotting mother-of-two Nicola Wilson, a constable in the same division, with a male officer at the bar of the Standing Order pub in Edinburgh's Rose Street.

Wilson, who thought she was having an affair, mistook the man for another male officer, Scott Noble, whom he thought his wife was romancing.

Falkirk Sheriff Court heard that it was not PC Noble but Mrs Wilson's boss, Andy McIntyre, who had just been promoted from sergeant to inspector.

Mrs Wilson, a police constable with 17 years in the force, said the atmosphere at the bar, where they were celebrating Mr McIntyre's promotion, "was good" and she was standing at the bar next to her boss and constable Ann Lake when Mr Wilson came over and grabbed her.

She said she had her hand on Mr McIntyre's shoulder.

She said: "For whatever reason I don't know why, Gordon came up to me, grabbed me by the shoulders by the clothing. He pushed me, bent me like backwards over the bar. It was so fast it came from absolutely nowhere.

"He said something, but it was so fast I couldn't tell what it was. He was angry, but I don't know what about - I still have no idea what it was about."

She said "the boys" pulled him off her, and the whole night out "just finished".

She went on: "I was just so upset, I had no idea why it happened, everybody was just shocked. I was shocked and upset and I was crying completely."

Wilson, of Grangemouth, was found guilty of the October 2006 incident, after a sheriff heard more than two days of evidence.

He was also found guilty of breaching the peace during a row over a missing bank book in an incident outside their children's primary school in the Falkirk area in 2012.

Wilson, a police officer for 26 years, had denied the charges.

Sheriff John Rafferty criticised the officer, whom he fined £850.

He said Wilson had been "awkward and evasive" giving evidence and said that he did not believe him on crucial issues.

He said his wife, on the other hand, had been "an honest and reliable witness".

He told Wilson: "This assault was not a fiction. It did occur, and you are guilty of it."

The sheriff also criticised former inspector Mr McIntyre, now retired.

He said he found it "difficult to accept" that the ex-inspector had not intervened in an ongoing incident in a pub involving colleagues who were junior to him and also difficult to accept he had not considered the incident to be a misconduct issue.

The court heard that Wilson now faced the prospect of dismissal.

Neither Wilson nor his wife would comment after the case.