Buckfast in the dock: Sheriff tells teenager guilty of assault to lay off the tonic wine

A teenager handed a community payback order for beating a man before performing a Nazi salute has been told to stop drinking Buckfast, The Herald reports.

Sheriff Alistair Brown at Dundee Sheriff Court also told the unnamed boy, 17, to “distance himself from the halfwits he is running with” following the incident in St Andrews.

The teenager pleaded guilty to assault to injury as well as acting in a racially aggravated manner in October last year.

The sheriff last month referred to the close association between violence and the tonic wine.

Sheriff Brown remarked that at Polmont Young Offenders Institute “43 per cent of their inmates had drunk Buckfast before their offence.”

He said: “You would be well advised to stop drinking Buckfast. It has high levels of alcohol and an astronomical level of caffeine.

“You can’t cope with it. I hope to see you get a grip. You need to distance yourself from the halfwits you have been running with.”

The boy was given 270 hours of unpaid work and a 12-month supervision order.

Responding to Sheriff Brown’s comments in December in a similar case, Buckfast sales manager Stewart Wilson said of the sheriff’s belief: “If Sheriff Brown believes that, then the accused should be admonished.”