A DRUGS pusher has begun a four-year jail sentence.

Manley Geddes, 51, acted as the middleman between cocaine suppliers and undercover police officers making test purchases in the latest phase of Operation Phoenix, a major police initiative to stamp out drug-related crime in Southampton.

Prosecutor James Kellam described how Geddes took the officers to locations in Shirley and Northam, where he left them for a few minutes before returning on both occasions with half an ounce of the class A drug, which had been bought for a total of £950.

Geddes, of Pansy Road, Bassett, had pleaded guilty at the city magistrates' court to two counts of supply and was committed for sentence at the crown court.

Judge Derwin Hope told Geddes how courts had repeatedly warned that people even playing relatively minor roles in the distribution of drugs must expect to receive substantial sentencs.

"These offences are so serious that only an immediate sentence of imprisonment must follow," he said.