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A wealthy lawyer staggers drunkenly through a train station shortly before getting into his £50,000 Range Rover and crashing.

Shameless Francis Bridgeman, 43, fled the scene of the accident on foot to escape a breath test then lied to police he was the victim of a horrific knifepoint kidnap.

Today the disgraced City solicitor collapsed in the dock as he was jailed for 12 months for his ludicrous web of deceit.

Judge Guy Anthony quoted a line from Sir Walter Scott’s poem Marmion, to Bridgeman: “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we ­practise to deceive.”

Then he told him: “You wasted valuable police time and public expense in order to escape a drink-driving offence when you should have had the courage and decency to plead guilty from the outset. To pervert the course of justice is a serious offence and warrants a custodial sentence.”

Bridgeman sank five pints of Guinness in a post-work pub binge with a friend before taking the train and getting behind the wheel of his Range Rover Sport last April.

He was so drunk he lost control and rammed the luxury 4x4 into a telegraph pole, which he hit so hard it snapped and was hurled 80 metres away in a field.

Instead of waiting for police to arrive, millionaire Bridgeman set off on foot through the countryside for three hours to avoid being breathalysed. Detectives found his abandoned vehicle and visited the Grade II listed £1.25million home he shares with sick wife Maggie in Wadhurst, East Sussex.

When he failed a breath test, Bridgeman invented the bizarre story about being kidnapped and claimed his attackers must have crashed his car.

The Oxford-educated school governor claimed he was taken away in a separate vehicle and later dumped in a field.

He said: “I felt an arm around my throat with what felt like a knife and heard a voice that said, ‘Keep driving’. I was almost in tears.”

Police launched a kidnap investigation but his story began to unravel when CCTV showed him drunk at London Bridge station the same evening. Forensic tests also found his DNA on the Range Rover’s airbag, showing he must have been driving the car when it crashed.

Last month a jury at Brighton crown court found him guilty of perverting the course of justice. They took just two hours to decide the bizarre tale was an elaborate ruse to escape a drink-driving charge.

He resigned from leading London law firm Macfarlanes, where he was a partner specialising in banking and corporate law. He also quit as governor of the Skinner’s School in Royal Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

Speaking after his sentencing at Lewes crown court, Det Con Emma Penrose-Reed said: “This has been an unnecessarily long and complicated investigation but I am glad that justice has finally been served.

“Francis Bridgeman attempted to create an elaborate web of lies around his bid to cover up his drink driving offence.”