Michelle Palmer, 36, and Vince Acors, 34, met at a £60 all-you-can-drink champagne brunch in July and were arrested hours later by police who claimed they had been having sex on the public Jumeirah beach.

Judge Hamdi Abul Khair, who has presided over their case at Dubai’s Court of First Instance, sentenced them to three months imprisonment, fined them 1,000 dirhams (£155) each for drinking alcohol and ordered their deportation after their sentence.

But he did not make clear whether the sentence related purely to the charge of indecent behaviour or the charge of sex outside marriage.

Neither Miss Palmer, a publishing executive who has lived in Dubai for over two years, nor visiting businessman Vince Acors, 34, of Bromley, south-east London, were present for the ruling.