A RETIRED woman with liver disease has been banned from the roads after she was spotted drinking wine while at the wheel.

Jackie Silvester had also had some “large glasses of wine” at home watching television before starting her journey from Clifton Moor to York Station on July 1, York magistrates heard.

Cathy Turnbull, prosecuting, said the 60-year-old driver was three times the legal alcohol limit when police stopped her in Shipton Road.

They had been alerted by a member of the public who saw her drinking from a bottle in the driver’s seat of her VW Beetle.

Her solicitor, Vicky Latham, said Silvester had not expected to drive that day.

The court heard she had been watching the tennis from Wimbledon on TV. But then she received a phone call from her daughter asking to be collected from railway station.

Silvester, of Marlborough Close, Clifton Moor, pleaded guilty to drink-driving and was banned from driving for two years.

She was sentenced to do 100 hours’ unpaid work and pay £85 prosecution costs and a £60 statutory surcharge.

Ms Turnbull said police saw Silvester drive out of Howard Drive at 7.15pm on July 1 and pulled her over as soon as it was safe to do so on Shipton Road.

Ms Latham said Silvester was a “retired professional lady”, and gave two character references. She did not have a drink problem and since being diagnosed with liver disease five years ago had had periods of complete abstinence from alcohol, said Ms Latham.

She had consumed a “number of large glasses of wine at lunchtime that day not expecting to drive”, but then her daughter had rung.

The bottle she was seen drinking from was a small “one glass” bottle of wine she had bought from a store while en route to the railway station, said Ms Latham.

The driving ban would cause problems for her family because she was the one who regularly took her 87-year-old mother to the chemist and doctor.