A man who has fathered eight children (though it might be 11) with 10 mothers and boasts he has slept with more than 40 women has dodged jail after beating up his ex-girlfriend and their young daughter.
Keith MacDonald, aka the 'Sunderland Shagger', who is surely a contender for Britain's worst dad, was spared a prison sentence for assaulting Clare Bryant and daughter Paige, three.
The court heard how MacDonald, 28, who has appeared on The Jeremy Kyle Show, kicked and punched 24-year-old Miss Bryant and hit their daughter's head with a fridge door after a row about sunglasses.
But despite getting off lightly, MacDonald was in no mood to apologise, boasting: "I pleaded guilty to get out of jail. If I plead guilty, I won't go. I didn't do it – I didn't touch her. I'm happy about not going to jail. It gives me a chance to get my life back on track."
MacDonald, who became a father when he was just 15, made Miss Bryant pregnant after he met her while drunk at a bus stop.
Magistrates in Sunderland heard how he beat up Miss Bryant when he went to her home in Houghton-le-Spring in June this year.
Paul Doney, prosecuting, described how MacDonald came round to drop off some money while the victim was with her daughters, Paige and Chloe, aged two.
"She asked him to go away, then he asked for his sunglasses and was asked to stay where he was while she got them," he said.
"He tried to push past her, then grabbed her hair and pulled her down before kicking her in the face and punching her to the head. He was pushed back towards the yard as a neighbour shouted at them."
MacDonald, from Sunderland, then threw the fridge door open, hitting Paige on the back of the head. The child suffered a sore head while her mother sustained a graze and a cut lip.
MacDonald pleaded guilty to assault by beating and assault at a previous hearing and was yesterday sentenced to 20 weeks in jail, suspended for two years.
He has other convictions for violent crimes and was ordered to attend a 'building better relationships programme' plus carry out unpaid work. He is banned from seeing Miss Bryant and her daughter except through arrangement by a solicitor and will have to pay her £100 compensation.
But the sentence left Miss Bryant furious.
"It just makes me angry,'" she said. "I'm more worried for my kids than for me – no one knows what he's capable of."
MacDonald said afterwards he had decided not to have any more children and claimed that he was actually a dad of eight, not 11 as previously reported, though with him it seems to be a case of 'pick a number'.
"That's enough," he said. "I don't want the hassle of having more."