Fellow pub-goers told police Tarrant was drink-driving
Star ordered 4 brandy and ports, then got behind wheel
CHRIS Tarrant told police two different stories when questioned after being caught drink-driving.
Customers at his local pub 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 Mercedes to his home in Bucklebury, Berkshire – one and a half miles from the pub where he had enjoyed a pre-Christmas meal.
Thirteen minutes after receiving the tip-off, officers reached Tarrant’s address, where the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire host claimed he had drunk three glasses of wine on arriving home.
However, Reading magistrates’ court was told he had 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 100ml of breath and was banned from driving for 12 months, ordered to go on a drink- driving rehabilitation course and fined £6,000. The legal limit is 35 micrograms.
Outside court Tarrant said 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.’
His partner Jane Bird, 55, sat in the public gallery throughout the hearing.
The court heard Tarrant been drinking from around 12.30pm at The Bladebone in Bucklebury, where he is a regular, on December 16 last year.
Tarrant and Miss Bird, who live within a mile of the Duchess of Cambridge’s parents, had been planning to attend a Christmas party that evening.
Hasrat Ali, prosecuting, said: ‘He had been served four drinks, four brandies and ports, and then left just after 2pm.’
She told the hearing staff and drinkers at the pub were ‘concerned that he had decided to drive home’ after ‘one member of the public had noticed that Mr Tarrant had stumbled near the bar area’. Police were called and arrived at his property at 2.25pm. Miss Ali said: ‘ He claimed that he had just drunk three glasses of wine just prior to police arriving.’
But after being taken to 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 of the drinks that he had bought at the bar of the pub, but accepted he had drunk too much. He said witness accounts that Tarrant stumbled could be explained by the fact the star suffers ‘difficulty with his knee’ for which he has physiotherapy. District Judge Shomon Khan told Tarrant: ‘In terms of disqualification it’s a relatively low reading, although that doesn’t reduce the seriousness of the offence.’
Tarrant, who has previously been fined and given six points for speeding, could be back on the road by October if he completes a drink-driving rehabilitation course. His manager, Paul Vaughan, last night said the star ‘was not a liar’ and suggested the differing stories may have been down to ‘understandable confusion’, adding: ‘Especially after his drinks at home.’
Mr Vaughan said in a statement that these had accounted for some of the 50-microgram reading, although Tarrant had ‘pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity’ to avoid a trial.