Castle: Spiked drink left me at mercy of woman predator
Amid fears of scores of girls being injected with drugs in clubs...
BROADCASTER and former tennis player Andrew Castle has claimed he was ‘beyond function’ after he had his drink spiked during a night out.
Mr Castle, 57, who presents a Sunday morning radio show on LBC, claimed that a woman tried to take advantage at the time of the incident, in 2003.
Mr Castle, once the number one ranked British tennis player, was discussing recent alarming cases of drink spiking with guest Dawn Dines, the founder of charity Stamp Out Spiking UK.
He told listeners: ‘I’ve taken a spiked drink. I don’t know whether I was the subject of that or whether or not I was sharing a drink with somebody. There were hens and stags, we had dinner and everyone was dancing.
‘There is a blimmin’ big difference between having your drink spiked and having too much to drink. I was beyond function.
‘This woman got into a cab with me – and everyone’s going to say that’s your story – well it was not that comfortable.
‘A woman got into the cab with me and was saying – let me just say – [things that were] unbelievably inappropriate. I was completely out with the fairies on this one.’
Mr Castle believed the woman wanted to take ‘advantage and blackmail and all sorts’.
His claims are the latest intervention following reports of women having their drinks spiked across the country. There has also been a worrying rise in apparent spiking incidents where women have been jabbed with needles.
In the last two months there have been 198 incidents of drink spiking across the UK and an additional 24 reports of people who say they have been injected with ‘date-rape’ drugs while at nightclubs and parties. Mr Castle added: ‘You just float around in a mist that this thing is happening and it’s no good at all.
‘I got really frightened and the adrenaline really kicked in. I got very protective of myself.’
The incident left Mr Castle, then a presenter on ITV breakfast programme GMTV, affected for 24 hours afterwards.
‘Everyone had to leave the house. I was rolling around in agony for a whole day,’ he added.
Last week Home Secretary Priti Patel demanded an update from police on the scale of spiking across the UK. Campaigners at universities around the country have joined an online campaign calling for the boycott of nightclubs.
The Girls’ Night In campaign has spread to 43 university towns and cities and will see nightclubs boycotted on specific dates over the next fortnight.
In some cases women have reported being violently ill and only realised they had been injected when they found ‘pin prick’ marks on their bodies.
A petition to introduce a legal requirement for nightclubs to thoroughly search guests has gained more than 130,000 signatures.
Ilana Elbaz, 20, recalled how she was ‘left semi-paralysed’ on a staircase after returning home from a Bristol nightclub three weeks ago.
In Nottingham two teenagers, 18 and 19, were arrested ‘on suspicion of conspiracy to administer poison’ and a 35-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of possession of drugs with intent to administer them at a nightclub in Lincoln.