A burglar smashed the window of Marks and Spencer in Blackburn with a paving slab before looting the store in a late-night raid.

Stephen Mowles, 44, caused £1,900 to the shop window triggering the alarm and causing the manager to be called out in the early hours of December 3.

Inside the shop he helped himself to seven bottles of port and 14 steaks before staggering out of the shop to a nearby taxi office.

During the raid he was wearing a neon green jacket and was easily spotted by officers who arrested him, just 500 yards from the scene.

Appearing at Preston Crown Court, Mowles, of Snowden Avenue, Blackburn, was spared jail after Judge Graham Knowles described the burglary as “about as botched an operation as it could be.”

The court heard Mowles was incredibly drunk on a mixture of alcohol and class A drugs when he broke into the shop.

He has a lengthy criminal record and has been addicted to drugs since his teens - although managed to have a five year break from drugs and offending, the court heard.

Judge Knowles, sentencing, said: “You were so drunk and drugged you behaved in such a grossly amateurish fashion, despite a long history which might have taught you some practical lessons in matters such as this.”

The court heard in 2013 Mowles was sentenced to a suspended sentence with drug rehabilitation and treatment for a  burglary he had committed.

He had been free from drugs and offending since.

However at the time of the offence he had relapsed, following the death of his cousin, and had reverted to taking heroin and valium.

Since his arrest, Mowles has returned to the drug and alcohol services and is currently in residential rehabilitation, the court heard.

Handing him a 10-month prison sentence suspended for 15 months with drug rehabilitation, Judge Knowles said: “You and I both know that if you go to prison, the punishment is not going to be to spend a few months in a prison cell but that it will probably destroy the process of living the kind of life you have done for the last five years.

“You would suffer appallingly, and so would the people you offend against - and it is those who I am thinking of.”

Mowles pleaded guilty to burglary and possession of a bladed article - a knife he had in his pocket at the time of his arrest.

The judge said there was a real public interest in suspending the prison sentence to allow Mowles to continue in rehabilitation.