A thief came unstuck when he decided to pour himself a Yuletide tipple and ended being caught by the police.

Officers who swooped on the North Yorkshire farmhouse found 55-year-old James Monaghan waiting for them - sipping from a bottle of sherry.

Dawn Birkett, prosecuting at Scarborough Magistrates' Court, said an alarm had been activated at Broad Farm, Oswaldkirk, near Helmsley, on December 28. Police raced to the scene and found a window had been forced with a screwdriver.

They made a search and found Monaghan, of Leeman Road, York, sitting in a chair in the living room holding a £15 bottle of sherry.

He admitted burglary at the house and taking the sherry, and told police he broke in to make himself a cup of tea.

Monaghan, who also admitted being drunk and disorderly the previous week in the waiting room at York station, was said by Mrs Birkett to have "a vast amount" of previous convictions.

The magistrates heard he was in breach of a conditional discharge for breaking into a probation office to make himself a coffee, trespassing at the Royal Station Hotel, York and at the Mayor's Office in Sunderland.

Jack Stephenson, the presiding magistrate sentencing Monaghan to four months' jail told him: "You are a persistent offender. You don't seem to want to comply with other alternatives to custody.