A VICAR sniffed out a burglar who stole his whisky, a court was told yesterday.

Erik Wilson returned to his vicarage and detected the smell of cigarette smoke - and none of his family smoked.

The missing bottle of Scotch and a smashed kitchen window told him he had been burgled. And in a search for clues he found the cigarette end by the side of his hi-fi system.

The vicar handed it to police who ran a DNA test and they had their burglar, said Harry Hatfield, prosecuting.

David Morgan, 23, was in jail for ten other burglaries but admitted burgling the St Barnabas vicarage, in Middlesbrough, on January 19 last year and stealing the whisky, a breadmaker and toaster worth £369.

Morgan, a heroin addict, was jailed for three years at Teesside Crown Court in March last year.

Yesterday, at the same court, Morgan, from Derby Avenue, Whinney Banks, Middlesbrough, was given a nine-month jail sentence, to run consecutively, when he admitted the raid and another on the All Saints Church Centre, in Middlesbrough, where he stole a television, video recorder and £45 cash in August 2000.

John Gillette, defending, said: "He had a serious heroin addiction, but after a year in prison he has completed a drug course."

The vicar said later: "I knew that the burglar had been caught, but it was only today that I learned it was down to my cigarette find."