Gordon Ramsay's father-in-law has been jailed for six months for hacking the celebrity chef's company computer system to steal information during a high-profile falling out.

Chris Hutcheson, 69, the father of Ramsay's wife, Tana, plotted with his sons Adam Hutcheson , 47, and Chris Hutcheson Junior, 37, to break into the restaurateur's emails and find financial details and other information, some of which ended up in the now defunct News of the World.

The two younger men were both given four month jail terms, suspended for two years.

Jailing Hutcheson Senior at the Old Bailey, Judge John Bevan QC said: "The whole episode of five months amounts to an unattractive and unedifying example of dirty linen being washed in public."

The Herald:

Hutcheson Senior was involved in a very public falling out with the chef, some of which was aired in legal battles heard at the High Court.

Having been sacked from his role as chief executive of Gordon Ramsay Holdings Ltd, he conspired with his sons, who both had IT roles in the business, to access company systems almost 2,000 times between October 23 2010 and March 31 2011.

This included accessing information regarding Ramsay's intellectual property rights and other material which might give them the upper hand in their legal spat.

On one day alone in February 2011, the court heard, Hutcheson Senior accessed the system 600 times and Adam Hutcheson 282 times.

Stories about a "hair transplant" and a "fishing trip" later appeared in the newspapers, the court heard.

After their actions were discovered, Hutcheson Senior told his son Chris in an email: "Guess we have been rumbled. Bit late though."

Prosecutor Julian Christopher QC told the court that after the civil case ended the families had become reconciled and as a result neither Gordon nor Tana supported the criminal prosecution. Neither was in court on Wednesday.

Hutcheson Senior kissed his sons as he was taken away to begin his sentence.

The judge said that despite the seven-figure impact of the civil legal battle between the older man and his famous in-law only immediate imprisonment was appropriate given the seriousness of his crime.

Hutcheson Senior, of Earlsfield, Hutcheson Junior, from Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, and Adam Hutcheson, from Sevenoaks, in Kent, admitted conspiring to cause a computer to access programmes and data without authority at a hearing in April.

Mr Christopher told the court: "For a period of five months following the dismissal of the first defendant from the company he repeatedly accessed the company computer network for the email accounts of Mr Ramsay and Mrs Ramsay and a number of employees of the company and in order to obtain material that might embarrass Mr Ramsay or be useful in the ongoing dispute with him and the holding company."

He added what had been taken was items including photos "provided to the press which led to considerable intrusion into the privacy of the family".

Among the hacks was the distribution of a photograph using Mr Ramsay's own email account, which he had earlier given a legal undertaking not to disseminate on privacy grounds.

Judge Bevan told Hutcheson junior, who sent the email, it was "close to an attempt to pervert the course of justice".

Hutcheson senior's lawyer Michael Borrelli said the older man had already paid Mr Ramsay more than £1 million in damages and legal costs relating to the civil case, plus his own legal fees of around £1 million and other costs of more than £100,000.

He said Mr Ramsay had made a police statement against his client as recently as February 2016 and described the chef's contact with the Crown Prosecution Service shortly before the trio's guilty plea in April as a "publicity stunt to appear to be wanting to disengage".

Hutcheson senior also denied leaking or authorising the leaking of any material to the press, Mr Borrelli added.