A PARTY prankster was slashed across the face and scarred for life after he filmed himself dangling his testicles over a sleeping man's mouth.

Kieron Dowson attacked Stuart Burton with a knife when he woke and saw mobile phone footage the humiliating joke - known as "tea-bagging".

Dowson was yesterday (Monday, July 15) jailed for three years and nine months after he admitted a charge of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.

A judge at Teesside Crown Court accepted the 20-year-old had been "substantially provoked" but told him: "Your reaction was wholly wrong."

The court heard how Dowson fell asleep drunk on the settee at a house party in Hartlepool in the early hours of Boxing Day last year.

Other guests said he "went off it" when he woke and found out what had happened, punched Mr Burton, then slashed him across the chin.

Defence barrister, Jim Withyman, said: "He dealt with that completely wrongly and very badly and excessively, and he accepts that.

"If he had been left to his own devices, he would have woken on the sofa at 7am with a bad hangover, not in the cells looking at a lengthy sentence."

Prosecutor Rachel Masters said Mr Burton grabbed a cloth and fled from the house before going to hospital where the four-inch cut was treated.

Dowson - who had given a false name to other party-goers - was eventually identified through his Facebook page, and arrested and quizzed.

He told police he had punched Mr Burton after being sexually assaulted, but initially denied slashing him with a craft knife, said Miss Masters The court heard how he has 34 offences on a criminal record for offences including wounding, two affrays and twice assaulting police.

Judge Howard Crowson told him: "Twenty is relatively young to have a record like yours . . . but you have good reason to want to turn your life around.

"It is not much comfort to your victim who probably would have been approaching this on the basis that it was just stupidity.

"In reality, perhaps he had not appreciated how humiliating his actions were. It is perfectly clear what he did could have been perceived as a sexual assault as you slept."

Mr Withyman said Dowson, of Sandringham Road, Hartlepool, had shown genuine remorse and was ashamed of his actions.