A SERIAL offender who has a long-running history of making vile and abusive phone calls has once again been spared a jail sentence.

Steven MacGregor appeared at Alloa Sheriff Court yesterday after pleading guilty to two different offences in the space of the last few months.

The troll called a children’s reporter an “English hater” and told a council worker: "I viciously hate you lot" during a separate foul-mouthed tirade.

He has been in the dock previously for calling a call centre and demanding the foreign-sounding handler "go home and take your disease with you”.

In addition, he has also been convicted of threatening other call handlers and of making homophobic remarks.

MacGregor also served time in jail for failing to comply with a community payback order (CPO), given to him after he threatened to bomb a Glasgow mosque.

However, despite his lengthy record of similar offences, the Alva man was spared jail time when he appeared for his latest offence yesterday afternoon.

Gail Russell, prosecuting, said that Englishman MacGregor phoned the Children’s Reporter House, Alva, on November 7 at around 1.15pm and asked to speak to a woman.

The woman who answered the call was told by the accused that he was annoyed that an arranged family matter had been adjourned until after Christmas.

Ms Russell said: “During the call he said and shouted: ‘The system is bias and against men. Was this arranged by that racist c**t of a reporter?’”

At 1.35pm that same day, a receptionist at the same office took a call from the agitated MacGregor.

Ms Russell said he began shouting that the reporter was an “English hater and a c**t”.

The reporter who MacGregor was originally asking for then took the call and quickly received abuse, being called a “disgusting racist” and could not respond because MacGregor began shouting louder and louder.

The woman became alarmed by the behaviour and police were called, to whom MacGregor told that none of his calls were aggressive.

On his second offence on January 18, a manager at the waste disposal unit at Clackmannanshire Council received a call from MacGregor who was immediately aggressive, demanding certain things be done regarding his waste being collected.

Ms Russell said: “He [MacGregor] called her a racist and a c**t. She felt intimidated. Around this same time, he phoned a housing officer who recognised that it was MacGregor who told the officer that ‘Clackmannanshire Council are all c**ts and racists’.

More calls were made that day, all of which were recorded and some of the things directed at staff from MacGregor included: “I viciously hate you lot,” “I am going to keep calling back, you cow,” and “you should not have a job.”

MacGregor’s defence agent told the court that the children’s reporter had phoned his office to alert him to his client’s behaviour, at which point he made contact with him to ask him to never call them back.

He went on to say that he is of the opinion that there is “something amiss with him psychologically” and that he “frequently cries when anything stressful happens".

A criminal justice social work report was made available on MacGregor, of East Stirling Street, Alva, and it questioned the merits of a CPO given MacGregor’s criminal record.

Despite this, Sheriff David Mackie told the lout that his behaviour was “seriously unacceptable” and that custody was a serious option in this case.

He was sentenced to 230 hours of unpaid work, ordered to not phone any council department in the next year and that he must undertake psychological counselling.

MacGregor's long history of shocking offences date back many years, with many of which involving abuse of public servants while doing their jobs.

In 2012, the loudmouth launched a vicious torrent of racist abuse at a Sky call centre worker – in which he told his victim to “go home and take your disease with you”.

He told the handler: “Have some damn respect for this country. I don’t respect you. I’m British. We rule you. I don’t have to respect you.

“Put me on to a British person. What’s your postcode? I’ll grass you to the f***ing border agency and get you deported for being a bloody immigrant stealing British jobs."

He was placed on a CPO for that offence.

Then, in 2014 he was placed on a new CPO for threatening to assault his partner after she picked up their children from nursery without notifying him.

Two years later, the yob pleaded guilty to making threatening phone calls in September of 2015.

MacGregor initially telephoned Aviva to enquire why his insurance had been cancelled. The 43-year-old was told it was due to non-payment.

He then took umbrage at the handler’s remarks and when asked if he was making threats, he replied: “Of course I’m threatening you. If I knew where you lived I would come down and I would kick your f**king c**t in.”

He asked one Aviva employee: “You sound a bit gay. Are you gay?”

When asked if he was a homophobe, MacGregor replied: “Of course I’m a homophobe.”

Whilst on the phone to a worker with the last name Fitzpatrick, the accused called him a “scummy Irish man”.

More recently, in 2017, MacGregor, who once served in the armed forces, wept in Stirling Sheriff Court as details of a further threatening call was made to a council worker.

He threatened to fight a social worker after he phoned to discuss a matter involving his children.