PAAward-winning actor and DJ Sir Idris Elba has been fined after he was caught breaking a 20mph (32km/h) speed limit while riding his scooter along Chelsea Embankment in London.
Sir Idris, known for starring in Luther and The Wire, was recorded travelling at 28mph last June.
He was given a £147 fine at Westminster Magistrates’ Court, as well as three penalty points on his licence, and ordered to pay £110 in costs and a £59 victim surcharge.
The Metropolitan Police presented three images to the court showing Sir Idris, 53, after his moped triggered a speed camera on the morning of 21 June.
The incident came a day after it was announced that the actor was collaborating with the King on a Netflix film marking 50 years of Charles’s charity, the King’s Trust (formerly the Prince’s Trust).
The actor was knighted for his own charity work in the New Year Honours.
PAThe Met Police said Sir Idris “confirmed that they were the driver/rider at the time” after being contacted by the force.
A spokesperson for the Met added that the star had been offered a fixed penalty to resolve the matter, but he did not pay it or provide details of his driving licence.
However, Sir Idris’s lawyers at Patterson Law, a firm specialising in motoring offences, told the court the fixed penalty notice never arrived and said that “if he received it, he absolutely would have accepted it”.
Police confirmed that the actor was not eligible for a diversionary course after an automatic check was carried out on the National Driver Offender Retraining Scheme (NDORS) database.
The law firm said Sir Idris had a clean driving licence and was pleading guilty to the offence, sparing the cost of a trial.
The prosecution was dealt with under the Single Justice Procedure – a fast-track system allowing magistrates to consider low-level criminal cases in private based solely on written evidence.
Sir Idris was not required to attend court for sentencing.
