DRUNK soap star Gillian Taylforth asked cops who put her in handcuffs: “Aren’t these like the plastic ones we used on The Bill?”
The EastEnders actress, who played Sgt Nikki Wright in the cop show, made the quip as she was pushed into a car after failing a breath test.
The actress, who played Kathy Beale, and is due to reprise her role on a more permanent basis in the coming months.
Taylforth, 59, had been out boozing when she realised her Range Rover was parked in a market square the night before stalls were due to arrive.
She left pals to move the luxury motor but drove so slowly a queue of traffic repeatedly sounded their horns behind her.
Officers pulled the star over but after she failed a breath test she flipped and was cuffed.
Magistrates yesterday banned the former Strictly contestant from driving for two years and slapped her with a £4,340 fine, after she admitted drink driving.
The court heard PC Amanda Payne found Taylforth in the passenger seat smelling of alcohol – and witnessed her unsteady on her feet at 5.30pm, on Friday, February 6.
Reading the officer’s statement Marc Thomson, prosecuting, told the court : “As I was handcuffing her Taylforth has started to resist, I did relay along the lines of ‘I don’t care who she was’.”
Then as the star was driven to a police station she said to the officer “Aren’t these handcuffs plastic like the ones we use in The Bill?” The court heard.
Once in custody a breath sample was taken and showed the actress had 94 micrograms of alcohol in 100mls of breath blood. The legal limit is 35.
Pleading to avoid a ban, Taylforth – in The Bill between 2006 and 2008 – said she needed it to drive fiance Dave Fairbairn, to treatment for his prostate cancer.
She said: “My partner has got cancer so I take him to the oncology unit in Southampton. And I use it for shopping purposes, my son is in a football team do I take to practice and matches.”
Refusing the bid, bench chair Robert Cinnamon, said: “Taking into account the local knowledge we are satisfied there would have been a real danger to pedestrians and other road users for you driving your vehicle when you were significantly over the limit.”
Taylforth, of Arrington, Cambs – previously arrested for drink driving in 1995 – was banned from driving for 24 months, ordered to pay a £3,500 fine, £720 costs and a £120 government surcharge.
In 1994 famously lost a libel case against The Sun over a report that she performed oral sex on her fiancé Geoff Knights in their Range Rover in a lay-by on the A1.
A jury rejected Taylforth’s explanation that she was stroking the stomach of her then-lover Geoff Knights after he suffered an attack of pancreatitis from drinking too much champagne at Ascot races.
When the jury foreman read out the verdict Taylforth collapsed and had to be taken to hospital. She was left with a bill for costs estimated at £500,000.