{"id":438726,"date":"2026-05-08T13:05:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/438726\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T13:05:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T13:05:12","slug":"bake-off-star-paul-hollywood-convicted-after-speeding-160km-h-to-get-sick-cat-to-vet-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/438726\/","title":{"rendered":"Bake Off star Paul Hollywood convicted after speeding 160km\/h to get sick cat to vet \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bake Off star Paul Hollywood<\/a> was pulled over by police after speeding at nearly 100mph (160.9km\/h) while rushing his sick cat to the vet, a court in the UK has heard.<\/p>\n

The TV chef, 60, is accused of tailgating cars at high speeds on the M25 to \u201cbully\u201d them out of the fast lane during his emergency dash.<\/p>\n

A Surrey police officer said Hollywood\u2019s Land Rover Defender was officially clocked at 96mph, but he is believed to have reached speeds of more than 105mph when he got on to the M26.<\/p>\n

When pulled over, Hollywood blamed his behaviour on a desire to get his unwell cat to the vet for treatment.<\/p>\n

At Worthing Magistrates\u2019 Court last week, the Great British Bake Off star pleaded guilty to speeding and was sentenced to five penalty points on his licence, a \u00a3293 (\u20ac339) fine, \u00a3120 in costs, and a \u00a3117 victim surcharge.<\/p>\n

After an intervention from his lawyers at Hickman and Rose, a second charge of driving without due care and attention was dropped by police.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr Hollywood accepts he was driving too fast,\u201d wrote Peter Csemiczky, a partner at the leading law firm.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was rushing home to get his unwell cat to the vet.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe understands this is no excuse and apologises for his actions.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe understands and accepts that he will be punished.\u201d<\/p>\n

Court papers show the incident happened at about 3.20pm on January 9th when Hollywood\u2019s car was spotted speeding along the M25.<\/p>\n

Pc Alexander McAlpine, from Surrey police, trailed Hollywood in an unmarked police car and said he saw the TV star\u2019s vehicle \u201crepeatedly bully other vehicles out of its way, through use of unsafe tailgating\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever there was a vehicle ahead, the driver would close up to a follow distance of less than 5 metres which was wholly inappropriate for the conditions and speed.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce a vehicle moved out of the way having been tailgated until they did so, the driver would then heavily accelerate and travel well in excess of the limit until they reached the next vehicle ahead on the road, at which point they would repeat the process, to try and push any traffic that was in front of them out of the lane, even if they were legitimately overtaking traffic travelling slower in lane three.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr McAlpine said Hollywood reached speeds of about 100mph on the M25 despite being in heavy traffic and the road being damp, and after joining the less-busy M26 he was \u201cable to achieve higher speeds more consistently\u201d.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018What can I bring?\u2019 Paul Hollywood, Clodagh McKenna and Rory O\u2019Connell\u2019s showstopper party dishesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cThey continued their behaviour of closing up to any vehicles ahead in their lane of travel, and then following them at an aggressively short distance, on one occasion roughly a mere 2 metres whilst travelling at approximately 80mph, until they moved out of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The officer said he matched Hollywood\u2019s speed, clocking him at a \u201cpeak\u201d of about 105mph, while a \u201cgeneral road speed remained above 90mph for an extended period of time\u201d.<\/p>\n

The officer caught the incident on his dash camera, then pulled over the Hollywood to challenge him for speeding and \u201caggressively tailgating other road users\u201d.<\/p>\n

The officer added in his statement: \u201cThe driver stated that the reason for their urgency and driving behaviour was transporting an unwell cat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hollywood, a judge on Bake Off since its inception in 2010, is also a motoring enthusiast who has competed in professional races for Aston Martin.<\/p>\n

In 2022, he confessed on TV that he had been admonished by fellow Bake Off judge Mary Berry for driving too fast.<\/p>\n

He called speeding his \u201cmost unappealing habit\u201d, saying: \u201cI probably drive a little bit too quick. It scares a few people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI took Mary in a car once and she was hitting me with her handbag.\u201d<\/p>\n

Court papers show Hollywood had no penalty points on his licence when he was pulled over by the police officer in January.<\/p>\n

He pleaded guilty in writing to the speeding charge and was convicted and sentenced in a private hearing of the Single Justice Procedure without having to attend court.<\/p>\n

Hollywood entered a not guilty plea to the charge of driving without due care and attention, and the allegation was withdrawn by the police force. \u2013 Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bake Off star Paul Hollywood was pulled over by police after speeding at nearly 100mph (160.9km\/h) while rushing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438727,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,7730,11318,40,38,41,39,1577],"class_list":["post-438726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-pets","tag-road-safety","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-uk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}