Man in g-string downs beer inside bottle shop chiller in Neknominate dare

File photo / NZ Herald

A man has been filmed stripping down to a g-string before walking into a Greymouth bottle store, downing a bottle of beer in the chiller and then leaving as part of the worldwide 'Neknominate' craze.

Neknominate involves youngsters daring each other to down alcohol while videoed on Facebook then nominating their peers to take up the challenge, and appears to have made an ugly debut on the West Coast.

The Greymouth footage was taken at the weekend. The next part of the footage shows the same man standing outside the Greymouth police station, swilling down another bottle of beer before driving off.

The video was shot by a laughing mate, and at the end of it another couple of people are nominated to take part.

In early January, All Black Steven Luatua apologised for his appearance in a video involving the social media-fuelled drinking game in which he is seen pouring beer down the throat of an unidentified man.

Neknominate, which has been dubbed 'the social drinking game for social media', started as a chain-mail game in the United Kingdom in January 2013. Just this week a Scottish man sparked outrage on the internet after he appeared to swallow a live goldfish on camera in a sick twist on the Neknominate craze, and Welsh police are investigating after a 29-year-old man collapsed and died after taking part in a Neknominate game.

West Coast police alcohol harm reduction officer Sergeant Sean Judd urged people to ignore the on-line dares.

"Alcohol is a poison and a drug and if people abuse it they risk being harmed or even death," Mr Judd said.

"It is hopefully just a small number of clowns doing it, who think it is funny, when it's really not."

He hoped it was a passing fad that would "dry up and blow away, sooner rather than later".

Community and Public Health health promoter Karen Hamilton agreed it was a problem, but not just locally.

"I certainly do not condone what they are up to, and it appears that people are doing sillier and sillier things as the game plays along," Mrs Hamilton said.

"The other concern is that it is not going away. Sometimes these kind of things just do the rounds and disappear, this one hasn't (yet)."

- The Greymouth Star