Model Caprice Faces Drink-Drive Ban

Supermodel Caprice faces a drink-driving ban despite a lengthy court battle to try and get her off the hook.
The 34-year-old blonde failed a breath test when stopped by police while behind the wheel of her black convertible Mercedes in the early hours just before Christmas last year on Tottenham Court Road in central London.
She had already pleaded guilty to a drink-driving charge at an earlier hearing at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court in north London.

The model - charged under her real name of Caprice Bourret - said that she had drank a bottle-and-a-half of red wine at lunch and several glasses at an evening party in the hours before she was arrested.

The court heard that the blonde Californian-born London-based model had been taking prescription antibiotic Cipro to combat a urinary infection, but it had affected her ability to eliminate alcohol as quickly as normal.A breath test revealed that she was nearly 50 per cent over the legal drink-drive limit as she had 52 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millimetres of breath, the legal limit being 35 micrograms.

The swimsuit model, with her hair tied back, wore a camel coloured jacket today as she sat staring at the floor throughout her latest appearance, in which the court heard rebuttal evidence.

In a statement read from an expert for the defence, Dr David Eccles, the court was told that the model's urinary infection - cystitis - was commonly caused by having sex.

He said: "To deal with recurrence of a urinary infection she has had to undergo an operation to stretch her urethra, which failed.