This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist News Legal
Lee Ryan given fine, road ban following drink-driving arrest
By Aly Barchi | Published on Tuesday 6 May 2014
Lee Ryan appeared at Ealing Magistrates Court in London last Friday to face charges relating to his previously reported drink driving arrest in mid-April.
Ryan pleaded guilty to failing to ‘provide a specimen’, aka take a breathalyser test, at the scene of the incident, and also to a criminal damage charge incurred when he urinated in his cell. It has emerged that ‘CBB’ star and occasional Blue singer, who has received a £3,325 fine and two year driving ban, also swore at police officers whilst in custody.
Police spotted Ryan driving erratically in the early morning of 11 Apr. He’d spent the night ‘partying’ with Blue man (and birthday boy) Duncan James, who showed up at the court along with Anthony Costa and Simon Webb on Friday to support their bandmate. Officers found an empty bottle beside the driver’s seat of Ryan’s vehicle, and saw him to be in a “drunken state”.
The prosecution’s Majit Mahal said at the hearing that “officers could immediately smell alcohol from Mr Ryan’s breath and his eyes appeared glazed”, adding: “Asked if he had consumed some alcohol that night, Mr Ryan said, ‘Yes, a few’. When Mr Ryan exited the vehicle, he was obviously unsteady on his feet, his speech was slurred”.
After being taken to a cell at Acton police station, Ryan vomited and urinated on the floor, reportedly claiming at the time that he “didn’t realise there was a toilet there”.
Speaking in court, Ryan linked his behaviour to the online abuse he’d attracted since his appearance on ‘Celebrity Big Brother’.
