A furious café owner says people are trying to "sabotage" his business after he posted a controversial job advert which was branded sexist.

Huseyin Ozevlat, 52, has managed Bedrock Café on Court Road for two months and recently advertised that he was looking for "two part-time female" workers.

The job ad, which was posted on a Facebook group, was quickly labelled sexist and unlawful by commenters.

Some men posted on the thread, which has since been deleted, that they were looking for work and were disappointed only women could apply.

However, Mr Ozevlat said people were "making a fuss out of nothing".

He told News Shopper: "We haven’t done anything wrong. I am trying to have equal numbers to bring up the female workers.

"We only have one female at the moment and I don’t know why people are kicking off. It is none of their business.

"I am advertising for a disabled person in May. People will probably say why I’m not advertising for a fit person. You can’t win."

His advert was looking for two women who could work 16-20 hours per week and prior experience was not essential.

He argued that trying to balance the male to female ratio doesn’t make him sexist and said it was pointless to advertise for men and women.

"Why put people’s hopes up?" he asked.

"I’m 52 years old and have been cooking since I was 15. I’m good but I know some females who are better than me even though they’ve been doing it five years."

Despite the Equality Act 2010 stating nobody should be discriminated based on gender assignment, Mr Ozevlat said hiring more men would have led to criticism.

He said he regretted not explaining to people that he was "short of ladies" and said social media users have been "malicious" to him since.

According to the owner, his faith in people has been lost and he is "very upset" that his business model has been questioned.

"I'm the last person on Earth to be sexist," the café owner concluded.