ODD SPOT: `The dog ate my teeth'

26th November 2005

It sounded like a bit of a jack-up when 46-year-old Kim George McKain appeared in the Napier District Court yesterday charged with breaching Napier's inner-city liquor ban. When defending the charge, he reckoned the police were only after him because of his name, and told them when they nabbed him with his cans of beer near the corner of Dickens and Dalton streets about 12.50am on September 22, the ban only applied to "young people."

But Judge Richard Watson wanted to know why the slightly dishevelled man was slurring while in court.

He had not had a drink that morning, McKain said, confiding he had been drinking the night before. The slur was, he said, because of problems with his teeth which had been snatched from his mouth by his dog, a jack russell, and chewed by the animal.

"You've got to watch those jack russells," the judge said. "They're about as bad as a Jack Daniels."

In the end, McKain found he'd bitten off a bit more than he could chew. He pleaded guilty and was fined $200.