Drink-drive shame of TV’s Chris Tarrant

WHO Wants To Be A Millionaire? host Chris Tarrant told police different stories after being caught drinkdriving, a court has heard.

Pub customers tipped off officers when the 71-year-old ‘stumbled’ from the bar having been served four brandy and ports.

He then drove his £60,000 (€68,000) Mercedes the short distance to his home in Bucklebury, Berkshire, south-east England.

Thirteen minutes after receiving the tip-off, officers reached Tarrant’s address, where he claimed he had drunk three glasses of wine on arriving home.

However, Reading Magistrates’ Court was told he refused to sign a pocket notebook confirming the story and was taken to a police station after failing a breath test.

Under further questioning, he changed his story, telling officers he had instead consumed a large brandy and a glass of wine.

Tarrant yesterday pleaded guilty to having 50 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath and was banned from driving for 12 months, ordered to go on a drink-driving course and fined £6,000 (€6,800). The legal limit in England is 35mg.

Outside court Tarrant agreed the punishment was ‘fair’, adding: ‘I’m very sorry and I accept my punishment. I made a mistake and I’ve paid for it.

‘I shouldn’t have driven. I didn’t actually [drink that much], just enough to be over, I honestly didn’t think I was over but apparently I was.’

The court heard how on December 16 last year, Tarrant had been drinking from around 12.30pm at Ban: Chris Tarrant yesterday the Bladebone Inn, Reading, where he is a regular.

Hasrat Ali, prosecuting, said: ‘He had been served four drinks, four brandies and ports, and then left just after 2pm.’ She said staff and drinkers were ‘concerned he had decided to drive home’ after ‘one member of the public had noticed Mr Tarrant had stumbled’.

Police were called and arrived at his property at 2.25pm. Ms Ali said: ‘He claimed that he had just drunk three glasses of wine just prior to police arriving.’

But at the police station, Tarrant ‘gave a different version of events in that it wasn’t three glasses of wine that he had drank, that in fact he had a large glass of brandy and a glass of wine’.

Simon Ray, defending, suggested Tarrant had not consumed all four drinks he bought at the bar but accepted he had drunk too much.

He said Tarrant’s stumble could be explained by the fact that the star suffers ‘difficulty with his knee’ for which he gets physiotherapy.