X Factor star Chico Slimani has been found guilty of drink-driving by a London court, after he said he broke years of sobriety following a series of bereavements. The singer, 55, whose real name is Yousseph Slimani, appeared at Willesden magistrates court on Thursday.
Slimani, who rose to fame on the 2005 series of The X Factor and later reached No 1 with It's Chico Time, had been drinking whisky for six hours after losing a third friend to cancer. He had also taken cold and flu medicine NyQuil, which he said was for a flu "which you may call long Covid", before being pulled over at around 6.30pm on 13 December in Southgate, north London.
Telling the court he is normally teetotal, Slimani said: "It was after a third bereavement of one of my dearest friends, which was just devastating... I couldn't take it, so I drank." He was disqualified from driving for 12 months and fined, with the court hearing he was heavily in debt and facing county court proceedings.
District judge Mark Jabbitt ordered Slimani to pay a £600 fine and costs, and offered him a place on a drink-drivers' rehabilitation scheme. The judge said he was "generally sympathetic" to the singer's bereavements but not to excessive drinking or taking medication without checking its effect on driving.
Slimani described the incident as "a catastrophe" that had led to the "loss of my reputation, the loss of work". He added that at the police station he thought only of the implications of being arrested for something "that goes completely against what I am and what I do".
