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News Item:
from The Sun (London), Monday, December 17, 2001:
I’M DATING A MODEL
Boozy Gary runs off with
a shop window dummy

By ANDREW PARKER

SOZZLED Gary Leigh was left feeling a right dummy -- after falling for a shop manneqin.

Gary, 32, spotted the fully-dressed model in a store display after a marathon booze session.

He was so smitten by its “alluring eyes” he SMASHED the shop’s £600 window, GRABBED the dummy and CUDDLED it in the street.

Passers-by watched amazed as he then frolicked with the model in the high street before strolling home with his new “girlfriend”.

Plumber Gary noticed the dummy in a women’s clothes shop in Buxton, Derbyshire, after sinking two bottles of spirits and several pints of lager during an all-day bender.

His lawyer Richard Orme told Derby Crown Court: “He wanted to make the mannequin’s acquaintance. He found its eyes alluring. But of course he now realises it was a case of drunken stupidity.

“He is getting married in January and this incident has been a source of embarrassment to him and his wife-to-be.”

Cops found the dummy at Gary’s home the next day after an anonymous tip-off. Gary admitted damaging the window and was fined £250 and ordered to pay £670 compensation and £150 costs.

Judge John Wait told him: “This was thoroughly irresponsible behaviour. You have serious problems with drink and on this day you had consumed a vast amount.”

Drink

Gary said after the case: “I’ve had an awful lot of grief over this from my partner but she is still going to marry me.

“It took a lot of explaining but I just told her I had had too much to drink and didn’t really know what I was doing. I’d met up with some friends and drank lager and spirits. I don’t know what came over me.”

[Note to Americans and other Friendly Powers: British towns have High Streets instead of Main Streets. “High” in this context means “Most Important”, as opposed to “Elevated”.]

News Items: I Married a Dummy
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