ELLESMERE Port’s mayor believes he is the target of a smear campaign after a “distorted” YouTube video was posted online.

Cllr Gareth Anderson claims a 33-second YouTube clip, which was uploaded on Monday under the username CaringConservatives, has been edited so it appears the Tory councillor is labelling residents ‘mutants’.

The footage (below) – which the mayor describes as “highly distorted” and “infantile” – has allegedly been doctored from a video diary Cllr Anderson made on holiday in America three years ago.

In the video the 30-year-old, who is on his way to a supermarket in Iowa, is seen as saying: “My usual visits to Asda would probably be later than this... mostly to avoid the mutants who go in during the day.”

When using the term ‘mutants’ Cllr Anderson says his comments were taken out of context and he was actually referring to a group of people in their 20s who had twice verbally abused and spat at him while he was at Asda in Ellesmere Port.

Cllr Anderson, who has lived in the town since he was four years old, said: “In the days before leaving for the holiday I went to Asda, which is where I usually do my shopping.

“On both of those occasions I was accosted by the same group of rather unpleasant people, once inside the store and the second time just outside it.

“They used foul language and they physically jostled me. On the second occasion one of them spat at me.

“As anyone would be I was shaken by this experience and did not want to bump into these people again.”

He continued: “Three days later I was staying at a hotel in Dubuque, Iowa, for the night. Asking the receptionist in the hotel where I could find a supermarket, she said the nearest was a Walmart store but warned me to be careful because she and some friends had been assaulted by some people there.

“She described the people who had assaulted her as ‘mutants’ and it reminded me of the people who had accosted me a few days earlier.

“I thought it was a relatively polite term for such people. It is these people I was referring to as mutants.

“How would you refer to someone who abused or spat at you in public?”

Cllr Anderson, a former Whitby High School pupil, officially became the youngest Mayor of Ellesmere Port in May.

He added: “Despite many opportunities to move away from the area to take up employment elsewhere in the UK, especially after university, I have always chosen to stay because I love living here. I love this town.”