Law School

Another successful day for celebrity lawyer Nick Freeman, then.

On Wednesday, client Lee Bowyer was banned from driving for 42 days and fined £650 after changing his plea on the eve of his court appearance at Northumberland Magistrates' Court.

"He was summoned for speeding, he was not summoned for speeding at 132mph. There was a great deal of negotiation with the Crown and my client pleaded guilty to speeding at 99mph. It was a plea the Crown accepted," explained a triumphant Freeman.

It was just the latest in a long line of successful bouts with the CPS for Mr Freeman and his grateful clients.

Other notable successes for 'Mr Loophole' include:

* The defence of Sir Alex Ferguson, cleared of driving along the hard shoulder of the M42, after arguing that the ManYoo boss had been rushing to the toilet suffering from 'severe diarrhoea'. "I had to go somewhere quickly," Fergie told a court hearing. Freeman claimed that, in the circumstances, Ferguson had two options available to him: "One is unthinkable and one is to take evasive action."

* The defence of David Beckham, whose eight-month disqualification from driving was quashed on appeal after Freeman argued that his client was "petrified" by pursuing paparazzi. Beckham claimed to have been "very nervous and shaken". He also announced during his 50 minutes in the witness box that an attempt had been made to snatch his nine-month-old son Brooklyn as they left Harrods a week earlier. In his biography of the Beckhams, author Andrew Morton accused David of making up the story.

* The defence of Paul Ince’s wife after she was caught speeding at 110mph because police sent a form to Ince, the registered owner of the car, rather than his other half. Mrs Ince's costs were then paid from public funds.

* The defence of Ashley Ward after the former Bradford striker was accused of speeding. Despite TV footage showing Ward's Aston Martin Vantage sports car nipping down the motorway at 110mph, he was cleared because, although the driver gave his name as Ashley Ward, 'the officer admitted in court that he could not be sure of the man's identity because he did not recognise him as the footballer.' A police video, played in court, was switched off - at Freeman's insistence - before the driver could be seen getting out of his car.

* The halting of Ronnie O’Sullivan's drink-drive hearing when Freeman accused the magistrate of winking at the press benches.

* The defence of Ronnie O'Sullivan from charges of drink-driving after Freeman claimed that the snooker player was "too stressed" to give a sample.

* The defence of millionaire John Marmelok, accused of smashing into his neighbour's house, after an anaesthetist instead of a police surgeon drew blood from the comatose driver.

* The defence of a millionaire property developer accused of speeding on the basis that police officers had failed to mention in the witness box that they identified the driver.

* The defence of Steve McFadden after calling on a police surgeon to prove the porky Eastenders actor's remarkable capacity for vodka.

* The defence of Jamie Meakin (another actor, apparently) after his VW Beetle smashed into a garden wall and a breath test at the scene found him to be over the legal limit. Freeman said the officers had failed to properly question and record the details of the woman who reported the accident. He said that as the woman was a possible witness, Meakin would be denied a fair trial if the defence were unable to call her.

* The defence of a woman found slumped in the car at a motorway service station car park, with an empty 500ml vodka bottle on the ground nearby. To quote from The Daily Telegraph: 'Police could not rouse Yvonne Lancaster when they found her. She smelled of alcohol, had taken blood pressure tablets and a B-test showed 136 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath. The legal limit is 35 microgrammes. Mrs Lancaster had to be propped up in the police station and was unable to answer most questions.'

However, she was cleared of all charges after Freeman argued that she had not been read her rights when carried into the police station. "I could not imagine a more vulnerable detainee than this lady," he informed the court.

* The defence of his former accountant's second wife who was caught drink-driving but released due to police errors. "She was p*ssed out of her brains, no argument about that. She was not arguing that she was not drunk. They got the procedures wrong," Freeman declared.

'A few days later, the accountant's daughter, who was at university, was mown down on the street by a drunk driver. The first wife wrote to Mr Freeman asking how he could live with himself.'

"I am a professional lawyer and I do not see that what I do is wrong," he responded.