A FORMER international businessman has been banned from driving for five years and given a suspended prison sentence.

Mark Anthony McDonnell, 53, was four times the drink drive limit when police found him slumped over his wheel at the side of the York Outer Ring Road at 8pm on May 22, the city's magistrates heard.

His solicitor John Goodwin said he had drunk a bottle of wine at home before driving to the home of his former fiancee with a second bottle of wine.

When she asked him to leave, he had stopped on the way back to drink most of the second bottle.

McDonnell, of Thorner, between Wetherby and Leeds, who had a previous conviction for drink driving pleaded guilty to drink driving.

He was given a 12-week prison sentence, suspended for 12 months on condition he does 300 hours' unpaid work and 33 days' rehabilitative activities including a drink impaired drivers' rehabilitation course.

Giving him a five-year ban, magistrates told him he would have to convince the DVLA he no longer had a drink problem before he got his licence back at the end of the ban.

McDonnell was also ordered to pay £85 prosecution costs and a £115 statutory surcharge.

Kathryn Reeve, prosecuting, said McDonnell gave a breath test reading of 138 micrograms of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35.

He was arrested close to the Moor Lane roundabout west of Acomb.

Mr Goodwin said McDonnell had been a high-earning globe-trotting executive in the glue industry for many years until his firm was taken over seven years ago and he had had to make some of his team redundant.

He turned to drink to cope which led to his first drink driving ban and the subsequent loss of his job.

He had managed to abstain from alcohol for three years, but had started drinking again shortly before he was arrested on the Outer Ring Road.

He was now going to Alcoholics Anonymous and taking a 12-month detoxification programme.