A drunk driver who killed a man should not have been at the wheel of a car as his licence had been revoked almost three years earlier because of his drug addiction, a court heard.

Kevin Moore admitted to downing several pints of beer before he crashed his father’s Land Rover Discovery into a car driven by Andrew Brain on the A229 between Linton and Staplehurst.

Jailing the 45-year-old father for six years, Judge Adele Williams said: “Your conduct was grossly irresponsible. You should not have been driving any vehicle at all.

“You ignored the law by driving without a licence and while uninsured. You ignored the law by driving while intoxicated. The loss of control of your vehicle was precisely because you were intoxicated.”

Moore, of Couchman Green Lane, Staplehurst, was also banned from driving for nine years and will have to take an extended test before he could be allowed back on the road.

Maidstone Crown Court was told on Friday that his real “demon” was drugs and he did not have a drink problem.

But on the afternoon of January 4, he went to The Source Bar in Maidstone, owned by his brother, and drank six pints of beer before driving home.

Prosecutor Giles Bedloe said Mr Brain, 63, was driving his Volkswagen Golf from Staplehurst to his home in Maidstone Road, Marden, just after 5pm when there was a head-on collision with the Land Rover.

Witnesses had seen Moore swerving over the road before the crash. His car ended up facing the wrong way on its side, while Mr Brain’s plunged into a deep ditch.

Mr Bedloe said Mr Brain had a severe head injury and was unconscious. He died the next day in King’s College Hospital in London.

Another driver later described seeing Moore’s car swerving and crossing the centre lines and hitting hedges. She then saw Mr Brain’s car coming towards her before going into the ditch.

She stopped and saw that the Discovery driver was scruffy and slurring his words. An off-duty paramedic who was in a friend’s house nearby went to help.

She could also smell alcohol on Moore. He told her he had drunk six pints. A police officer saw he was unsteady on his feet.

“In the police vehicle, he almost fell backwards,” said Mr Bedloe. “He was taken to Pembury Hospital with minor injuries. A blood sample could not be taken for medical reasons.

A breathtest was taken and a back calculation showed he would have been twice the legal driving limit.

Moore, a qualified bricklayer, said in interview he had been into Maidstone to the Job Centre but it was closed. He then went for a beer at The Source.

He drove through the town but could remember nothing else after being at Linton Hill, about two miles from the collision.

Mr Bedloe said there was a defect to one of the tyres which caused it to “fail” about a kilometre from the crash.

“It was a prolonged, persistent and deliberate course of driving, whether or not it was exacerbated by the tyre,” he said. “Substantial amounts of alcohol have led to impairment of his ability to drive.”

Mr Brain was the sole carer for his 92-year-old mother Dorothy and she had since moved out of her home of 60 years and gone into residential care because she could not look after herself.

She described him as a wonderful and loving son, and much-loved son. She felt she could not cope without him and wished she had died first.

Moore had seven previous convictions for 11 offences, including failing to provide a specimen in 2002, driving while disqualified in 2004, no insurance in 2008 and being drunk in public in 2010.

Mr Bedloe said Moore was banned from driving for three years up to 2005. He did not apply to renew his licence until August 2012, but it was revoked in March 2013.

The DVLA would not divulge the reason, but Mary Jacobson, defending, said it was probably because of Moore’s drug problem.

He accepted, she said, that the tragedy was “one hundred per cent his fault” and he had to live with it.

He was doing well until he was about 28, when he parted from his wife and his life unravelled.

“Things spiralled downwards and he ended up homeless and on drugs,” said Miss Jacobson.

“He makes no bones about it. He became a Class A drug user, homeless and on the streets. He absolutely reached rock bottom.

“There was almost a Damascene conversion when he simply pulled himself out of it. He referred himself to an agency dealing with drugs. He moved back into the family home with his parents in his 40s.”

They had a farm and he did agricultural jobs. He was on a methadone prescription.

“The irony was that he didn’t have an alcohol problem,” said Miss Jacobson.

“His demon was drugs which he was combating and making progress.

“Since it happened he went onto alcohol as a crutch. He was in a terrible state, knowing what he had done. He is devastated. He described wanting to take his own life.”

Moore’s family had described him as the sort of person who would brake for a rabbit.

“He can’t believe he has killed a human being,” said Miss Jacobson. “There is nothing worse than prison than having to live for the rest of his life with the fact he has killed someone.”

Judge Williams said Mr Brain’s mother had made a moving impact statement and her anguish was “very great indeed”.

“Nothing I can say, nor any sentence I can pass, is in any way designed to put a value on his life,” she said. “It couldn’t possibly do so, nor can it deal with Mrs Brain’s grief and anguish.

“You did not set out to kill anyone that day but your conduct was grossly irresponsible. You took a deliberate decision to drive knowing you should not have been deriving unlicensed, but more importantly because you were drunk.”