A HEROIC Hampshire dad who intervened in a potentially fatal attack has scooped a top bravery award.

Mark Simmons has been awarded an Association of Chief Police Officers silver medal for his efforts to catch two thugs who beat up a man in Southampton.

Now the medal has taken pride of place amid the growing clutch of commendations for the former First Bus driver's brave intervention last year.

Mark, 36, from St Mary's, Southampton, was in Lodge Road when he saw two men hitting another with pieces of chair leg.

The gallant dad-of-one stopped, shouted, then chased the attackers as they ran off. He tailed them in his car before blocking their path, leaping out and performing a citizen's arrest on one of the men.

Police arrived, arrested the man Mark had captured and later caught the other.

Mark, who now works as a delivery driver for Delices de France, said his spontaneous act was sparked after years being at the receiving end of abusive behaviour while driving Southampton buses.

"I had been assaulted so many times when I worked on the bus that when I saw these guys beating someone up, it triggered something in me," he said.

"I thought, I'm not going to stand back and watch this guy get hit. I know what it feels like."

At the time, the family man who lives in Denzil Avenue with his wife Lucy and their seven-month-old daughter Danielle received a special commendation from Hampshire's chief constable.

Then, when the trial was heard earlier this year, he received another certificate of commendation from the Hampshire judges' court.

"I thought that was the end of it," said Mark. "Then I got this letter from the Association of Chief Police Officers to say I'd been nominated for a national award."

He was invited to a ceremony and presented with a silver medal and framed certificate - much to the delight of his family, who he hadn't told about the latest nomination.

"They were made up," he said. "Absolutely over the moon. My wife was in the car when I went after the blokes and she thought I was mad. Now she says she's very proud.

"I think that'll be the end of it now though. It was just something I did that I didn't really think about."