A VIOLENT Gibshill knife man who has racked up THIRTEEN separate blade convictions is set to spend another Christmas behind bars — after being jailed for three years.

Robert Best — previously imprisoned for slicing a man’s leg to the bone with a machete — sprinted from police with a five-inch knife tucked inside the waistband of his trousers.

Best, 39, claimed that his only intention was to deliver the cutter from his father’s house to another property — but he offered no reason as to why he would be doing that.

Greenock Sheriff Court heard how plain-clothed police moved in after spotting the multiple-offender acting ‘furtively’ in the Oronsay Avenue area of Port Glasgow.

Prosecutor Lindy Scaife said: “The officers stopped their vehicle and identified themselves as police and the accused ran off at speed towards a grassy area.

“He dropped an item from his waistband and continued running. The police recovered a five-inch long knife with an ivory-coloured handle.” Dad-of-three Best was arrested a short time later and denied having been in possession of the knife.

Defence lawyer Aidan Gallagher told Sheriff Ian Fleming: “His record speaks for itself.

“He was released from a prison sentence in November last year and he had been at liberty until his arrest for this latest offence in May.” Mr Gallagher said his client’s relationships with his three children — aged 10, 14 and 18 — had been ‘affected’ as a direct result of his catalogue of offending.

The lawyer added: “His children have not visited him when he has previously been in custody.

“Mr Best says that the knife was given to him by an aquaintance and he was taking it from his father’s house to his partner’s address.” Quizzed by Sheriff Fleming about that explanation, Mr Gallagher replied: “There is no real reason as to why he was conveying the knife from one address to the other.” The Telegraph told in August 2007 how Best was jailed for nearly five years for an horrific machete attack on his neighbour Hugh McGowan.

Mr McGowan needed to undergo surgery on his calf after the blade of the weapon cut so deep that it caused permanent nerve damage and chipped a bone. He also sustained deep wounds behind an ear and to one of his arms during the brutal 2006 attack.

Best had been previously jailed for four years at the High Court in Glasgow for another assault to severe injury.

Sheriff Derek Hamilton, pictured, sentenced him to 32 months at Greenock in August 2012 for another knife-carrying offence — after using a ruler to measure the eight-inch length of the blade. Best committed his latest knife offence on 6 May this year.

His not guilty pleas to being in possession of both heroin and cannabis at the time were accepted by the Crown.

Sheriff Fleming told him: “You have two previous convictions for violence and 12 for carrying knives and you were out of prison on licence at the time of your latest offence.

“There is no option other than to impose a significant custodial sentence.” Best, of Lansbury Street, Gibshill, Greenock, was returned to prison for the remaining 306 days of his previous sentence and jailed for a further consecutive 27 months.