Former teacher and media personality Simon Warr has denied charges of historic sex abuse on schoolboys.

The earliest allegation relating to one of the three boys involved dates back 35 years.

Warr is due to stand trial on May 12. The trial is scheduled to last eight days.

He appeared for a plea and case management hearing at Ipswich Crown Court yesterday afternoon.

The 60-year-old is accused of four counts of indecency with a child between 1979 and 1993 and three indecent assaults between 1980 and 1993.

At the end of the hearing Warr, of Great West Road, Hounslow, Middlesex, was released on conditional bail. He was arrested in late 2012, before being released on bail pending further enquiries.

After his bail was extended, he returned to a police investigation centre in August last year where he was charged with seven offences.

Warr made his first appearance in relation to the allegations before West Suffolk Magistrates’ Court in Bury St Edmunds the following month.

The case was then committed to Ipswich Crown Court.

Warr has appeared on radio and national television as a social media commentator and was also a newspaper columnist.

He has also appeared on the popular BBC programme The One Show.

He is also a well-known figure on the local football and rugby scenes and taught French and Latin.

Warr was educated at the Royal Masonic School for Boys, near Watford, and had a spell at drama school in London.

He thought about pursuing it professionally.

However, he read modern languages and education at Goldsmiths College in London. In the early 1980s he came to Suffolk to teach.