Former model banned for three months, adding to earlier ban for driving while disqualified

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The former model Katie Price has been banned from driving again after she was convicted of being nearly twice the limit while in charge of her pink Range Rover.

Police found Price, 40, slurring her words and slumped in the back of her car in a “very” drunken state in Greenwich, south-east London, in the early hours of 10 October last year.

She told Bexley magistrates court on Monday that a mystery man had earlier driven her car, but Judge Nigel Dean found she was not a “plausible or credible” witness.

He found her guilty of being in charge of the vehicle while over the legal limit, but ordered a charge of drink-driving to be dropped because prosecutors offered insufficient evidence.

Judge Dean banned her from driving for three months, adding to the ban from earlier this year for driving while disqualified.

PCs Benjamin Jones and Balvinder Mann saw her car veer off Shooter’s Hill and hit a grass verge at 12.40am before seeing it stationary about 15 minutes later.

She was in the back of the Range Rover, which police noted had damage to the bumper.

Price, of Horsham, West Sussex, blamed her fellow passenger and friend, Kris Boyson, for not revealing the identity of the person who was supposedly driving the £130,000 car.

But the judge found she had been in possession of the key fob at the time of the arrest, during which police saw the engine, lights and heating come on.

Dean said: “I did not find her to be a plausible or credible witness.”

Price told the court she had drunk between three and four “pornstar martini” cocktails at Boyson’s 30th birthday party in a restaurant.

She said she allowed a stranger, who was friends with Boyson, to drive the car back towards Boyson’s house near Bluewater - and did not remember any crash.

“I was really drunk. I’m such a lightweight,” she said.

Jones told the court that he approached the car to find Price in the back with her friend, Kris Boyson, in the passenger seat.

“Her eyes were blurred and her speech was a bit slurred. Although she was sitting, it was in a slumped position,” Jones said.

Both Price and Mr Boyson said a third person ran off with the keys after an argument. But the car’s engine later turned on and Price handed a fob key over to another officer, Jones told the court.

Price had 69 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes.

Along with a £1,500 fine, she was ordered to pay costs and a victim surcharge to bring her total bill to £2,425.