A former choirmaster and teacher from Suffolk has been jailed for more than a decade for child sex offences spanning more than 40 years.

David Pickthall, of Ingrave Road, Brentwood, Essex, was charged with nearly 40 offences between 1980 and 2021 in Brentwood and Upminster relating to 19 people.

Pickthall was made an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2015 for his services to education and charity, and had worked on a number of TV and film projects including Wallace and Gromit and 28 Days Later.

Fiona Ryan, prosecuting at Monday’s hearing, said Pickthall had admitted a “range of predatory sexual offences, primarily committed against students and former students of his at Brentwood School.

“Secretly he had a penchant for touching and spying on young adolescent boys and his desires were easily satisfied because of the positions he held”.

The barrister said Pickthall would sexually assault boys “under the pretence it was part of the teaching style” and would “begin by tickling them under the guise of a mild punishment for getting something wrong”.

He would progress to put his hands into their underwear, Ms Ryan said, adding that he gave students alcohol when they visited his home.

She said that in 2021, Pickthall used a fake social media profile – “pretending to be 17 initially” – and kept asking an underage boy for a photograph of his penis, which the boy eventually sent.

Eve George, mitigating, said Pickthall “did see the good sense in pleading guilty at the earliest opportunity”.

She added: “Perhaps the greatest punishment is his fall from grace.”

Ms George read a statement written by Pickthall, which said he was “profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed of myself”.

The 66-year-old admitted at an earlier hearing at Colchester Magistrates’ Court to 29 child sex offences.

These included 16 counts of indecent assault, 10 counts of voyeurism and three counts of making an indecent image of a child.

He was jailed for 12 years, with a four-year extended licence period, as well as being made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order at Chelmsford Crown Court on Monday.

Judge Mary Loram KC told Pickthall: “You are without a shadow of a doubt a predatory and manipulative paedophile who has adapted his offending over the years.”

“If you hadn’t been arrested you would have carried on.”