Wish I'd phoned a friend
Chris Tarrant drink-drive shame
TV presenter Chris Tarrant was held for drink-driving home from the pub after being shopped by other customers.
Police were tipped off after the ex-Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? host stumbled near the bar during a lunchtime boozing session.
When officers went to his house he claimed he was over the limit because he had been drinking at home.
But yesterday the 71-year-old admitted drink-driving. He was fined £6,000 and banned from the road for 12 months. After the hearing at Reading Magistrates’ Court, he said: “I made a mistake and I paid for it. I shouldn’t have driven. Full stop.”
Staff at the Bladebone Inn in Bucklebury, Berks, near Tarrant’s home, said he was served four brandy and ports after arriving at 12.30pm on December 16. His lawyers claimed they were not all drunk by him. Prosecutor Hasrat Ali said staff and members of the public were “concerned” when the star got in his Mercedes and drove home.
After a discussion between customers and bar staff, they called police.
Officers arrived at Tarrant’s house just 13 minutes later. The presenter claimed he had downed three glasses of wine since getting home.
But he was given a breath test and found to have 50 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes.
When later interviewed at the police station, Tarrant changed his story.
Ms Ali added: “He gave a different version of events in the sense that it wasn’t three glasses of wine that he had drunk, that in fact he had a large glass of brandy and a glass of wine.”
Sentencing Tarrant, the judge told him the offence was “serious” and he had put others “at risk”.
Outside court, the former Tiswas star said he thought he had drunk “just enough to be over” [the limit].
He added: “I honestly didn’t think I was over, but apparently I was, so fair enough.”