Stuart McQuaker prevented the patrol car from leaving the town’s Bank Street police office by sprawling out on the tarmac.

The 49-year-old turned up at the station while most people were tucking into their turkey dinners.

But the festive spirit was the last thing on McQuaker’s mind as he began banging on the station’s windows in a shameful drunken outburst.

His bizarre antics were recounted at Paisley Sheriff Court after he pled guilty to the offence.

He admitted laying down on the road in front of the car, preventing it from leaving the yard and making its way to an emergency call.

The court was told that McQuaker told the officers he wasn’t moving - and that the only way they would get their car out of the yard was if they arrested him.

Officers duly obliged and McQuaker found himself in police custody over Christmas Day and Boxing Day before appearing in the dock on December 27 and admitted banging on the police station windows, lying on the road, refusing to move and preventing the police from being able to answer a 999 call.

Sheriff Susan Sinclair called for McQuaker to be assessed by social workers and deferred sentence until this week, when McQuaker returned court. She spared the Barnes Street man jail, placing him on a Community Payback Order. He has to complete 140 hours’ unpaid work over the next six months.

McQuaker previously hit the headlines back in 2010 when he went on a drunken rampage at Paisley’s Royal Alexandra Hospital. He picked up a six-day-old baby and strode around the maternity unit with it before refusing to hand the child over. He then resisted arrest.