Jeff Brazier has pleaded guilty to speeding in his Volkswagen campervan after an incident in April saw the TV presenter travelling 7mph above the 30mph speed limit.
An automatic camera caught the 47-year-old heading along the northbound A16 near Burwell, Lincolnshire, at 11.11pm on April 5. He pleaded guilty to speeding as well as failing to give information related to the identification of the driver.
Mitigation and Explanation
In mitigation, Brazier said he had wanted a solicitor to check the “validity” of the speeding offence “as for that whole stretch of the A16 I was behind a police car who was driving within the speed limit and adjusting their speed accordingly throughout”.
He said: "I must have believed we were in a 40mph zone, it’s a road I use often and I have never got it wrong before. Sadly my opportunity to contest has been wasted through my poor communication with my solicitor so I accept that I clearly have got this wrong and that I was speeding in my campervan."
Brazier said he had contacted his solicitor when he received the speeding charges. This led to him failing to identify the driver offence as he thought the speeding charges were incorrect. He said he “believed the matter must have been dealt with” because they did not discuss it again.
Court Proceedings
Lincolnshire Police posted a letter notifying Brazier of the charge on September 18. Brazier told the court: “I regret not checking on the progress of the solicitor as it led me to commit this offence for which I apologise.” He was not required to attend court and entered pleas through the fast-track Single Justice Procedure.
Brazier recently spoke about his desperate battle to save his son Freddy from addiction, revealing how he repeatedly searched the streets to bring him home. The TV presenter claimed he went to the police for help and tried to physically stop Freddy leaving the house as he struggled to keep him safe.
Personal Struggles
He told us: "To see your son suffer in that way and not be able to appeal to his better nature to stop that addiction cycle….I couldn't do anything to stop it. And I tried standing in front of the front door, I tried going to the police."
He admitted that the “hardest and most challenging” part over the last six years was that Freddy, 22, would suffer from psychosis when he used. Speaking to Busted star Matt Willis on his On The Mend podcast, he said: “That's when his behaviour is not his own. And that's when he's just walking the streets. And you don't know what could happen to him. I've had to go looking for him on countless occasions and trying to bring him to safety, only for him to then flee the minute that you turn your back because he needs to be near the things that he perceives himself to need.”
