DISABLED boozer Fred Wood has just been let off by magistrates for being drunk in charge of a wheelchair. Fred did not launch himself off the lip of the Eastern Corridor in a haze of Danish formaldehyde, more is the pity.
According to the The Sun newspaper in London, Fred was driving a three-wheeled electric invalid carriage through Lingfield, Surrey with three times the permitted level of alcohol in his blood.
The wheelchair, with all the styling and performance of a top range motor mower, is capable of four mph flat out.
At that live-for-the-moment sort of speed, Fred attempted to take a bend, walloped the kerb and tumbled out on to the pavement.
Fred was incapable of walking without assistance after the incident. His defence council quickly pointed out that this was due to blocked arteries - caused by persistent alcoholism.
The charge followed on his earlier banishment from driving motor cars proper and being found again drunk in charge but this time unconscious in a wheelchair, parked outside a supermarket in East Grinstead.