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news
CyclingMikey, City of London Magistrates (credit - CyclingMikey Youtube)Top TV comedy producer who “flipped the bird” and told CyclingMikey to “go f*** yourself” fined over £2,000 and handed six points for phone use while driving
A comedian and leading television executive has received six points on his licence and been fined over £2,000 after reacting angrily when CyclingMikey confronted him for typing on his phone “with both hands” while driving in traffic in London.
Jimmy Mulville, the co-founder of Hat Trick Productions, the company behind hit TV programmes such as Have I Got News For You, Father Ted, Derry Girls, and Room 101, was spotted using his phone behind the wheel by the road safety campaigner and YouTuber, real name Mike van Erp, while driving over Battersea Bridge last July, the Evening Standard reports.
According to Van Erp, after being confronted over his phone use, Mulville “flipped the bird” and shouted at the cyclist “go f*** yourself”.
> Tired of road crime": CyclingMikey on episode 16 of the road.cc Podcast
Mulville, who was previously banned from driving in 2020 and handed another three points last October for speeding, was prosecuted for driving while using his mobile phone after not paying a Fixed Penalty fine.
Represented by Freeman and Co, the law firm of Nick Freeman – commonly known as Mr Loophole due to his ability to secure acquittals for celebrity clients charged with motoring offences – Mulville initially challenged much of the evidence put forward by the Metropolitan Police, including the accusation that he used his phone behind the wheel.
However, at City of London magistrates court earlier this week, the 68-year-old comedian – who was absent from the trial due to illness – conceded that he was using his phone to look at a text.
> Mr Loophole applauds police action against "vigilante cyclists" filming law-breaking drivers
Mulville was found guilty of driving while using his mobile phone and ordered to pay a £1,000 fine, plus £625 in costs and a £400 court fee. He also received six points on his driving licence.
“This was entirely out of character for him”, his barrister Sam Thomas told the court. “At the time, there were family concerns and he did look at the phone to look at a text message.”
Describing the incident, road safety activist Van Erp said that he was cycling home when he noticed the driver of an Aston Martin Rapide not keeping up with slow moving traffic, before accelerating sharply, a move described by the cyclist as the “WhatsApp gap”.
“I commented to myself it was symptomatic of a distracted driver and I wondered if he was on the phone”, he told the court. “I stopped next to the driver’s side window of the Aston Martin, I saw the driver was busy typing on the phone.”
Van Erp claimed he saw Mulville “typing with both hands”, before quickly shutting down the app when he realised he was being watched.
He added: “At this point he flipped me the bird and mouthed to me something rude. I believe it was ‘go f*** yourself’.”
> Taxi driver warns CyclingMikey he will "end up needing the dentist" after challenging phone use
Van Erp, known as CyclingMikey on social media, has reported thousands of law-breaking drivers over the years, with 800 successful prosecutions in the last five years and 383 reports last year.
He attracted attention for particularly high-profile cases, such as catching Guy Ritchie and Chris Eubank using their phones while driving, with the film director being banned from driving for six months as a result, while the retired boxer was given three penalty points and told to pay £280 in fines, court costs, and fees.
One of his latest videos, reported on by road.cc earlier this week and also stemming from July 2022, showed a London taxi driver telling the camera cyclist that he will “end up needing the dentist” after he challenged the professional driver’s mobile phone use behind the wheel.
However, the cab driver, who Mikey filmed in Hyde Park, avoided police prosecution due to staff dealing with an IT system change, with Van Erp adding that they had been left understaffed and that the report subsequently ran out of time.
In January, speaking to road.cc, Mikey said “people need to see justice being done” and that any abuse he receives is simply because some motorists “feel they have the right to drive how they want”.
“In the beginning of my camera work, almost 17 years ago, I took a lot of strain at the abuse thrown my way,” he said. “I’d answer each comment seriously. Nowadays, there has been such a torrent of abuse and lies about me that I just let most of it wash off me.
“In the UK cyclists are considered by society to be ‘cockroaches of the road’, unworthy scum who freeload on the public highway and are terrible lawbreakers. For such a person to challenge a driver for lawbreaking is a massive affront to the social order, and people don’t like this.
“Many of those throwing abuse also feel that they have the right to drive how they want, and that nobody can tell them what to do. They see the prosecutions, and they are afraid of the consequences, and they are angry that someone dares to do this to them.”
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
Latest Comments
- Mikezerodown 1 sec ago
Another one Mike taking over for peanuts....
- wtjs 9 hours 26 min ago
it seems that most places just rely on sufficient policing to reduce the issue...
- Matt Page 10 hours 10 min ago
Many manufacturers, including Scribe, can give you methods to reduce the noise level. On Scribe, and other ratchet designs it's usually just adding...
- wtjs 10 hours 48 min ago
It wouldn't work at all where wtjs lives...
- Sriracha 11 hours 5 min ago
Pretty sure AI could skim through hours of footage in a few seconds to identify suspicious events. Of course someone in authority has to care in...
- chrisonabike 11 hours 13 min ago
Bonsai samurai? Or is it just a case of "they seem to get smaller every year"?
- mdavidford 13 hours 56 min ago
I dunno - seems like it's coming round on a regular basis...
- Rich_cb 15 hours 38 min ago
The mistake is to focus on the US....
- chrisonabike 15 hours 50 min ago
I mean it seems silly to complain in detail when we're firmly in the territory in the UK of "you will have to live with this the rest of your life ...
- eburtthebike 18 hours 21 min ago
I thought students were supposed to be intelligent?
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89 comments
Which other guy?
Probably Gimpl
Ah thanks - makes sense.
To put it another way. **** *** ****s.
"Nuts!"
"I'm really really upset to be called an idiot, that is just plain rude".
Well that's big of you.
This was unacceptable, sincere apologies to anyone offended. It was only aimed at 2 people (hirsute and Hawkinspeter), and they might deserve it, but that doesn't make it ok.
Best of luck to all (well, nearly all).
The distraction of using a mobile phone when driving has been shown by researchers to be as dangerous as the effects of driving over the alcohol limit. Research has further shown that the distraction effect lasts for up to ninety seconds after the phone has been put down and driving resumed. That's if the phone is put down, you're making a pretty large assumption that all these people would have carefully put their phone away before starting off again, very few of those I see in London traffic do so: the pattern tends to be that they will be texting/emailing/WhatsApping when stationary and reading the replies as they move along. So it is a real danger. Why do you think the sanction is set so high? Have the authorities just decided to impose six points and a £200 fine on perfectly safe behaviours just for the hell of it?
I have on occasion when driving seen the motorist behind me messing with their phone changed my route.
You are quite happy to use words incorrectly to undermine someone.
Fascist Tory then.
I think you totally missed the point.
I'm a Tory, ok then you're a nazi! (See how unhelpful that was?)
Holy Necropost Batman!
What do you mean “just stop”?! You’re the one who’s resurrected a two-week old thread to stick up for a guy who is objectively incorrect.
Besides, I wasn't arguing semantics - vigilantism is a crime. It involves taking the law into your own hands, bypassing the authorities/legal process, and dealing out your own punishments. None of which Mikey does. He reports to the correct authorities and utilises the legal process to hold bad drivers to account, with the full support of the police.
You’re free not to like him (I’m not exactly head of his fan-club myself, as I said elsewhere in this very thread), but if you don’t like him and don’t like the way he antagonises drivers, then say that, don’t accuse him of a crime he hasn’t committed.
That's the dictionary definition.
You have the wrong word
If you don't like him, fine but don't describe him as something he is not.
My sympathies, when they get on their high horse there's no climbing down. (They've lost when they correct your spelling).
You are clueless to what vigilantism is. Where I grew up you would regularly see leaflets being distributed warning that anti social crime would not be tolerated and offenders would be dealt with. I've also seen the aftermath of these actions. Come back to me when CM starts to dish out summary beatings and giving people 24 hours to get out of the country.
Here come the cadre
- policing dissent as usual
This coming from someone who this very morning told hawkinspeter on another thread that if he didn't support the royal family he should emigrate from the UK because he is an embarrassment to "our" country. Spectacular.
I'm glad you mentioned that as I am genuinely interested in how you feel about the monarchy bearing in mind you are the son of someone who worked at the FCO like me. Did you go on post?
E.T.A. And I consider you to be one of the cadre
Why should my father's occupation have any bearing on or relevance to my opinion of the monarchy? That's a very odd question.
As a teacher I would have thought you knew that what you learn at an early age can have a bearing on the rest of your life.
That can be true but is a highly simplistic argument (and I say that also being a teacher).
I grew up in house with parents who would never consider voting anything other than Tory, smoked like chimneys and would hear nothing said against the monarchy. None of those things describe me, because I made up my own mind based on what I have seen around me ... which is what the vast majority of people I have dealt with in my 30 + years of adult life on this planet do.
No one's "policing" anything, you're perfectly free not to like Mikey. There's healthy disagreement about Mikey BTL on most stories he features in – I’m pretty ambivalent about his activities myself.
What's happened here is you’ve misused a word, called him something he’s not and have been corrected. That’s all. If you'd have said "I don't like Mikey" or "I disagree with his methods", I wouldn't have commented at all.
You’re also misusing “cadre” – a group of people who share an opinion you disagree with is not a cadre.
Not knowing the definition of a word isn't "dissent".
Usual tactic of bullies, use your erroneous dissent to make yourself the victim.
That is very funny when there's been a very predictabe pile on by the cadre.
*Makes objectively untrue statement about someone on website where that person has support*
*gets corrected*
“Help! Help! I’m being oppressed!
BTW, “cadre” is still the wrong word.
cadre
kä′drā, -drə, kăd′rē, kä′dər
noun
A nucleus of trained personnel around which a larger organization can be built and trained.
A tightly knit group of zealots who are active in advancing the interests of a revolutionary party.
A member of such a group.
Totally pathetic that I needed to post that. He clearly knew what he was saying.
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