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Okay I conceed there might have been other factors involved but it’s a reasonable assumption given that your chances of having an accident are greatly increased if you’re intoxicated, generally you don’t crash if you’re sober. (in addition to it being 4pm in the day with your mum in the passenger seat) and also due the fact that he failed a breath test.
You could be driving very well and have someone else drive into you.
I just don't "get" drink driving. If I'm driving, I don't drink anything alcoholic at all. It's safer that way.
If I decide to have a drink, then I'll get the bus or a taxi. Neither are particularly inconvenient nor expensive.
But the consequences of driving after a drink are massive.
Bit of a no-brainer really.
Zero sympathy for DD's
He must've been nipping on to do that much damage to his car Hate mail link
Okay I conceed there might have been other factors involved but it’s a reasonable assumption given that your chances of having an accident are greatly increased if you’re intoxicated, generally you don’t crash if you’re sober. (in addition to it being 4pm in the day with your mum in the passenger seat) and also due the fact that he failed a breath test.
I attend more people crashing sober then those who are well pie eyed. Generally at 4pm they’re less likely to be drunk not more, there’s umpteen reasons why people crash before you get to be being pie eyed.
It occurred to me that he may have been secretly drinking. Not uncommon amongst relapsing dependents, and would explain why his Mum was in the car.
I feel sorry for him and his problems, but drink driving is a really serious thing...the fact that he's in the public eye means that he needs to be seen to feel the full force of the law.
When he's well enough, which will be a while, no reason why he shouldn't still work, IMO
How about you yapping old biddies keep you **** noses out of the life of someone you don’t even know.
Well considering he’s spent a considerable amount of his life in the public eye, pretty much everything to know about him is public knowledge, it’s fair to say the public know him better than they know some of their own family.
But I’m sure he’ll feel much better for the concern you’re showing on his behalf.
What a scumbag! must have been well pie eyed to crash.
How do you work that one out?
I saw the video on the news, and as he got out of the wreck of his Mini, he was clearly unsteady on his feet, and he looked half-asleep, like he could barely keep his eyes open, plus to do that amount of damage he’d have been going at some speed, and he was on the wrong side of the road.
Apart from that, it was an exemplary bit of driving...
I just wrecked my car, I just wrecked your car, psyche!
Well, he's back in rehab and has withdrawn from the TV program . No Takeaway this Saturday, and the last two after that will be with guest presenters.
Who could Dec replace him with? I’m going Russell Grant because Grant and Dec is very similar sounding. That or Brant could give up on trousers and bikes for Brant and Dec.
I just wrecked my car, I just wrecked your car, psyche!
That made me proper lol
They have finally got round to towing the car he hit away.
Into rehabilitation, which is the best outcome before the court case that will inevitably follow. At least he’s taken control and responsibility for his actions, and ITV have clarified thier support for the programme.
I wish him well, and glad he’s unable to drive for some time to come.
Who could Dec replace him with?
I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Adam Ant and Dec, but not overly hopeful.
I'd give that Steven Mulhern a chance. He hardly ever seems to be on TV and comes across as really talented when he is.
and every day one of those pissed up drivers seriously injures or kills somebodies partner/wife/husband/kid/freind/workmate/other road user.
More than one, on average, even allowing for a significant number of the victims also being the perpetrators. Latest DfT stats (2017) for drink drive accidents:
Killed: 200
Seriously Injured: 1,170
Who could Dec replace him with?
Jamie Carragher is at a loose end till next September. Could add a touch of edgy slapstick to the last two show's.
This : “he (like anyone else) deserves our scorn for getting behind the wheel drunk”
End of really.
He must be bored to death of being part of Ant and Dec/PJ and Duncan.
He's loaded so he could go off and do something else away from the world of showbiz.
It's pointless doing rehab if you are returning to the same situation.
"This : “he (like anyone else) deserves our scorn for getting behind the wheel drunk”
End of really."
True. And like anyone else with mental health and addiction problems, he deserves our understanding and sympathy too.
I was fairly ambivalent to the whole situation...
But just seen a post on Facebook which used him as an example about people dealing with depression/addiction aren't always the people you think and the comments are just an outpouring of sympathy and saying they agree...
Which is ok, apart from the fact he got in a car drunk at that point you are a **** regardless of mental illness or addiction IMO
But because he's a generally well know likable chap everyone is just sympathetic, if it was Dave down the road that got pissed up and smashed a few cars up and a kid has to be taken to hospital I doubt people would be feeling sorry for him.
"if it was Dave down the road that got pissed up and smashed a few cars up and a kid has to be taken to hospital I doubt people would be feeling sorry for him."
Davist!
PS; how does the quote thing work now?
Well, ITV have announced what will replace their show on Saturday
Fast And Furious 5.
Satire is dead.
"But because he’s a generally well know likable chap everyone is just sympathetic, if it was Dave down the road that got pissed up and smashed a few cars up and a kid has to be taken to hospital I doubt people would be feeling sorry for him."
If I knew his background and it was comparable to PJ or Duncan's, then yes I would feel sorry for him. I'd also say he's a prick for drink driving- they're not mutually exclusive. Alcoholism is a bastard of a thing, and when you combine it with mental health issues you can't judge people the same as you would someone who'd done it while in a sound/stable mental state. My anxiety's driven me to do some things that are irrational or stupid, because I am wrong in the brain. You can't judge broken people by the same standards.
What Northwind says.
I’ve a lot of sympathy for anyone with alcohol addiction or alcoholism it’s a really horrible condition. It has absolutely nothing to do with him being famous that I have sympathy. As I said yesterday he deserves to be pushined for drink driving if he was.
Well, ITV have announced what will replace their show on Saturday
Fast And Furious 5.
Satire is dead.
As someone who suffers with mental health problems I completely understand how people make unusual/poor decisions at times but my point is people seem to be unable to separate being sympathetic towards that to being critical of drink driving. As northwind said they are mutually exclusive you can be someone suffering from an illness but also a **** for drink driving at the same time....
Fast And Furious 5
Wizard idea! Let's get Aunt Fanny to make us a picnic, load up the Scooby and race Dick and Julian down to the seaside for an adventure!
on the list of people I feel sympathy for, he's pretty close to the bottom.
No special guests, Dec to go solo. I'm wondering how that will work...
No sympathy here - if he's guilty then he should be banned and get the punishment he deserves. This is from someone that's had life changing injuries from a bad driver. Thank god there were no major injuries !
Dec going solo ..but I'm guessing Steven Mulhern will have a bigger than usual part to play..
I think he has more talent than the pair of them to be honest .
Hope he A: gets the help he needs and B: faces up to any consequences his actions cause with the correct attitude.
As someone who has also failed a breathalyser test on the roadside in my youth but passed the official test like trailwagger, it's very easy to think you are sober when you're not. I had been out all weekend on a stag do (the biggest bender I've ever been on) and had stopped drinking on the Sunday around 7pm. I didn't drive until Tuesday morning and still tested positive! I'd even checked with a friend whether I seemed back to normal and she said I didn't have any outside symptoms of being a bit tipsy. It was around christmas time so there was areal chance of getting pulled over hence why I left it a whole day to drive and that still wasn't enough. For the Record the roadside test came up Red and the official one came up 32 micrgrammes an hour later so just under. I took it as a warning to be extra careful from then on. I also know an alcoholic who doesn't drink huge amounts, just keeps himself constantly topped up. He regularly gets pulled over and usually blows yellow. Occasionally he blows red but again he always blows under on the official test.
I'm not condoning what he has done but until we know the full story (if we ever do) then judging him is a bit harsh. As a prominent celebrity who makes his money from being wholesome he needs to get this sorted correctly.
We all know he shouldn't be drinking and driving. I'm sure he does too. But he's an addict and depressed I'm also quite sure (as most addicted don't plan to be that way) that he never woke up one morning and though "you know, I think I'll get stuck into prescription painkillers and booze".
One could question the ethics of his GP who continued to prescribe ...
“you know, I think I’ll get stuck into prescription painkillers and booze”.
Reminds me of Noel Gallaghers distinction between the classes.
"The middle classes experiment with drugs, the working classes get stuck in!"
But he’s an addict and depressed
yes, because he has a lot to be depressed about. That justifies putting other peoples lives at risk...
I wonder how he's gonna address it on the first programme without him?
probalby start with a toast to absent friends.
oh no wait....
yes, because he has a lot to be depressed about.
I`m no expert, but I am pretty sure that's not how it works.
When ever a celebrity's "issues" are being described as dependency on prescription drugs I think of this. This is a small cut n paste, email in profile if you want to read the whole article.
The Clean Kill
Ready to do some entirely hypothetical imagining?
Let’s pretend that you are a famous media personality. The exact particulars of your job are unimportant for our purposes, so let’s just say you are well known – both as a name and as a face. You enjoy your job, the public seems to like you and your bosses are extremely happy with your annual performance. You’re not overexposed, you’re not under-utilised. You work your niche perfectly and you look, pretty much, to be set for life.
The only problem is you’re mad into coke.
This isn’t a little weekends-and-high-holidays habit. It’s not really that you take a connoisseur’s interest in it either. You just love the stuff, plain and simple. With friends. Alone. With drinks. Without. Afternoon. Evening. Night. You can’t get enough of it.
It’s a problem. Not just in terms of your own well-being, but in terms of your career prospects too – because guess what? You’ve got sloppy. The press have been tipped off to your prodigious intake and they’ve had people staked outside your flat for weeks now, documenting every time your dealer arrives.
They have pictures. They have people prepared to offer up quotes. They have all the evidence they need to get this past their in-house lawyers, and they’re ready to print.
If they push the button on this, it will cause you some serious headaches. There are very few brands or companies that can afford to keep their ties to a documented drug user unsevered – and the bigger and brighter a star you are, the greater the pressure they’ll be under to distance themselves from you, for even the most minor transgression.
So what do you do? You can’t afford another injunction. You can’t cross your fingers and hope it’ll go away. What other choice do you have?
Your best bet in this sort of situation is to confront the people who have a gun to your head – and offer to slit your own throat instead.
This is how the Clean Kill work.
You agree to go on the record. You agree to give quotes, and pictures, and, most importantly, your word that this will all stay exclusive. This is really all that they’re after – so, in exchange for that, the journalists will then afford you some artistic control on the direction their story takes.
For example, rather than framing the story around drugs that are illegal to obtain, you might be able to persuade them to focus more keenly on the sorts of drugs you can legally possess instead. Like alcohol, for instance. Or prescription painkillers. Or bath salts.
This will prevent anyone dwelling too much on the potential criminality of your behaviour, and it gives any companies, charities or other organisations with whom you do business the leeway to spare your contract.
It will also save the tabloids from having to take too moralistic a stand about cocaine – the way they would have to when the story hinges around Kate Moss taking it, or Tulisa trying to procure some for someone else.
I just don’t “get” drink driving. If I’m driving, I don’t drink anything alcoholic at all. It’s safer that way.
If I decide to have a drink, then I’ll get the bus or a taxi. Neither are particularly inconvenient nor expensive.
But the consequences of driving after a drink are massive.
Bit of a no-brainer really.
All true, but you're thinking like a person who drinks alcohol socially. I used to know an alcoholic who was done more than once for drink driving. He had a very responsible job and lived in a rural area and like most of us was dependent on his car. Unlike most of us however he wasn't just over the limit when out for a night down the pub, or that much publicised "morning-after" when you are still a bit light-headed and your system is full of alcohol. For that sort of alcoholic it's almost the normal state and they lose perspective. This isn't a justification, but an explanation of why such a person doesn't have the same perspective as you, or me.
I long ago gave up drinking at lunchtime as I found it ruined my afternoon. Then I did a dry January this year and started drinking non-aloholic beer. After a few weeks of this (I over-ran into February then March, in my enthusiasm) I realised I could now drink beer at lunch, or even breakfast, without any effects, yet apart from a couple of Saturday lunchtimes it just didn't seem right. Weird eh?
And from today's Popbitch...
One interesting thing to emerge from the wreckage of Ant McPartlin's drink-driving this week is just how damaging PR can end up being for people.
Reporters at the Sun had taken a serious look into Ant's various personal problems, and they knew how deep-rooted his lifestyle issues were. None of that reporting saw the light of day though, as it was all jettisoned in favour of a bunch of relatively soft-soap tell-all interviews so as to try to preserve the Ant and Dec brand (and, by extension, ITV's share price).
Now it's clear that Ant's problems weren't just a blip caused by knee surgery, will any of the bad actors in this whole sorry episode pause for thought?
Will the friends and colleagues who always piled back to Ant's for his legendarily generous after-show parties consider their part in it? What about the handlers who spun those semi-fictional stories to keep their commissions intact? The hacks who helped it along to further their careers? What about the execs who dragged him back on air to meet their ratings targets?
It's ironic that there's going to be no Takeaway this week. Because that's what this situation requires.
Of course nobody's saying he's a massive drugs dustbin, but - as mentioned by Alexander above - it's funny how many celebs develop prescription painkiller problems innit?
The thing with prescription painkillers is that it is a genuine problem in the states, where far more powerful painkillers are prescribed routinely for all sorts of problems. They have a massive problem with oxycodone which is often prescribed as a fix all (especially to the lower strata of society who don't have the health insurance for proper treatment).
In the UK and much of Europe though, there is a vastly different regimen to the administration of painkillers, partly because the health service provides more adequate and correct treatments, partly because there is a greater understanding and want to not prescribe addictive drugs, and partly because doctors don't get kickbacks and commission on the drugs they prescribe.
So I can kind of understand how an American celeb, or even a brit who spends a lot of time in the states, can fall down the trap of addiction to prescription painkillers as that is a problem there for everyone not just the celebs. But when it happens to a UK celeb I generally call bullshit.
Well, here were go, he's in court. I hope he does the right thing and pleads guilty, gets a long ban and offers up some charity work.
I hope he does the right thing and pleads guilty
He has.
£86,000 fine and 20 month ban apparently. Shame that money couldn't be put to good use somewhere.
and a car crash live on BBC as they are reporting it