You’d think that being caught drink driving would be a fairly simple matter to resolve. You know, some jerk drinks too much and drives erratically, then along comes Mr Plod and confirms he’d had too much. The courts then formally punish the miscreant. Job done.
Andrew Seeley, 32, obviously thinks differently. He was so drunk he didn’t know where he was going (in the news story’s own words). When he noticed he was being followed he tried to drive off at speed. When eventually stopped he was found to be more than 2½ times the legal limit. But then it gets amusing.
Seeley refused a second breath test (probably after realising how far over he was) on the grounds of having a collapsed lung from abusing aerosol gas when he was younger. He refused blood samples on the grounds of having a fear – no, a phobia – of needles. He denied driving under the influence of drink or drugs, smugly believing his wild stories would save him. He claimed that he had swerved across the road to avoid an unknown creature:
It was bigger than a cat. It was living. I can’t say what it was.
It reminds me of an old Marty Feldman sketch, where he’s in a vet’s waiting room with a large basket containing some unseen-but-monstrous creature. He says to a little old lady with a budgie in a cage:
I looked him up in the Cattle-breeder’s Guide – he wasn’t in there; I looked him up in the Standard Book of British Birds – he wasn’t in there either; I finally found him in the Book of Revelations.
The best part is that the Sheriff (this was in Scotland) ignored all that crap and found him guilty of drink driving. He was banned for four years and given 100 hours community service. The only thing the Sheriff said was that he couldn’t be sure if Seeley really did have a phobia about needles and so he didn’t find him guilty of refusing to provide a specimen.
Seeley obviously lives in a different world to normal people.