Harrogate magistrates heard on Tuesday (Nov 24) how Adam Robert Grange had been in the town's Asda store late on the evening of October 26 when a member of staff viewing CCTV pictures of what was going on saw him take a £1 bottle of soft drink, drink from it and replace it before leaving.

Prosecutor Sam Rogers said 23-year-old Grange had been stopped outside and detained until police arrived. He had said: ''Why can't I just pay for it? I was dry, I needed a drink.''

When Grange, of Oxford Terrace, Harrogate, pleaded guilty to theft his solicitor Stephen Culleton commented: ''One suspects that if this case runs its natural course, he will be paying upwards of £86 for the swig of drink he took at Asda.''

Mr Culleton said Grange, who had been a little muddleheaded while in the store - he had apparently drunk from one bottle and paid for another - was adamant he had been invited back inside to make full recompense.

"This might have been a ruse on the part of security staff to calm things down, but I cannot comment on that,'' said Mr Culleton.

He said Grange, a self-employed labourer, would be ''assisted in minding his Ps and Qs over the coming months'' if he was given a conditional discharge.

Court chairman Judith Thomas, who gave Grange a nine-month conditional discharge with payment of £85 costs and £1 compensation, told him: ''It was an unpleasant theft because you left something you had drunk from for somebody else to buy.''