Rather like the old saying about buses, you don’t see a celebrity car crash for ages then two come along at once.
And in a Brighton courtroom this week, one was compared with the other in ways that may have enjoyed some superficial appeal – but crucial differences marked them apart.
Paul Drayton, 50, who recently separated from his husband, the comedian Alan Carr, attracted sympathy in some quarters when he was jailed – then freed – having drunkenly reversed into a police car.
When he was imprisoned on Wednesday (26 January), some were quick to point out that the same district judge, Amanda Kelly, had given the drink-driving Brighton-born model Katie Price a suspended sentence.
By convention, those on the bench don’t take part in the debates that follow in the court of public opinion.
There may be many good reasons for this – but one downside is that, in an age when it may seem unfashionable to defend magistrates and judges, the chance is missed to further public understanding of what they do and why.
Price, 43, can count herself lucky, having crashed while over the drink-drive limit – and when she was already disqualified from driving. She was in fact on her fifth driving ban.
District Judge Kelly said when she sentenced Price: “The public may be appalled to hear that I can’t send you to jail today.”
As a former national newspaper journalist, District Judge Kelly would know better than most how some in the media would react to the sentence.
And although she spelt out why Price kept her freedom, inevitably some still found fault – among them Sussex Police. The force, which rarely publicly criticises the sentences imposed by the bench, raised its official eyebrows.
Superintendent James Collis, a former Brighton officer and now head of roads policing for Sussex and Surrey, said that the sentence, “as the judge explained, could have and should have been much worse.
“In our view, Price is extremely lucky not to be spending Christmas behind bars.”
The force weighed up whether to appeal against an unduly lenient sentence but earlier this month said that its review had concluded that there were no legal grounds.
Drayton though was jailed. At his appeal, after two nights in prison, his barrister John Dye acknowledged that District Judge Kelly was well within her powers to jail his client.
Mr Dye told Brighton Crown Court: “This is a very serious drink-driving offence. It crosses the custody threshold. I think to say anything other than that would be absurd.”
But he also set out reasons that persuaded Judge Shani Barnes, the former honorary recorder of Brighton and Hove, that Drayton’s sentence should – like Price’s – be suspended.
An excellent article on the failings of the judiciary in Sussex.
The moral of the story is that if you are a “star” and going to drive drugged up and/or drunk, do so in Sussex as you will likely not be jailed.
And how much did homophobia play its part in the Drayton case?