Dylan goes electric… and gets fined! Timothée Chalamet slapped with “£65 parking fine” after riding Lime bike to London premiere of A Complete Unknown

‘Judas!’ That infamous cry may have been aimed at a Telecaster-wielding Bob Dylan by an outraged folkie in Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1966, but it possibly could also have been uttered by Timothée Chalamet this week – after the actor was allegedly slapped with a £65 fine for failing to correctly park the Lime bike he rode to the London premiere of his upcoming Dylan biopic.

Chalamet received the fine while attending the UK premiere, at London’s BFI Southbank, of A Complete Unknown, in which the 29-year-old stars as the mercurial singer-songwriter and Nobel prize winner, charting the Bard’s early Greenwich Village days and ultimate estrangement from the folk scene, culminating in him controversially ‘going electric’ at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

Sixty years on, Chalamet decided to mark the occasion by offering up his own 2020s version of ‘going electric’ – by ditching the obligatory chauffeured car journey to the premiere for a Lime rental e-bike.

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Palace Cinemas (@palacecinemas)

Clips of the Wonka actor cycling through the streets of London on one of the green hire bikes were posted on social media on Tuesday night (prompting some predictable grumbling on social media about his lack of helmet).

Chalamet – dressed in classic 1964-era Dylan garb, as has been tradition during the film’s promotion – then carried on riding the bike onto the red carpet, before parking it right in front of the paparazzi and using his phone to end the ride.

“If Timmy says Lime bikes are in, Lime bikes are in,” Palace Cinemas wrote in response to the actor’s active travel-focused commute.

Timothée Chalamet arriving to ‘A Complete Unknown’ event on bicycle. pic.twitter.com/jaXD6baoa5

— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 14, 2025

However, in an interview with French talk show Quotidien on Wednesday, the Oscar nominee revealed that unbeknownst to him the red carpet at BFI Southbank was, in fact, an unauthorised zone for parking Lime bikes – leading, he claims, to a hefty £65 fine from the hire bike company.

When asked by host Yann Romain Barthès why he decided to ride a Lime bike to the London premiere, Chalamet said: “The idea is that I had no idea. It’s ecological! There was a traffic jam.”

But reflecting on his headline-grabbing red carpet cycle, the Dune star added: “I actually wasn’t allowed to park there, and I got a £65 fine. And actually it’s horrible because it was an advert for them!”

It has yet to be confirmed whether Chalamet, channelling his inner mid-60s Dylan, responded to news of the fine by replying: ‘I don’t believe you, you’re a liar’.

« The idea is that I have no idea… there was a traffic jam and I actually wasn’t allowed to park there and I got a £65 fine and actually it’s horrible because it was an advert for them ! »#TimothéeChalamet at Quotidien today pic.twitter.com/fSXuaoVeNx

— Choupistick (@choupistick) January 15, 2025

In any case, BBC radio DJ Annie Mac also attended the premiere on Tuesday and posted about Chalamet’s Lime-scented arrival, writing on Instagram: “He arrived on a Lime bike and then had trouble parking it, as Lime bike hadn’t accounted for A listers wanting to leave their bikes on an actual red carpet.”

> ‘Once upon a time you rode a Lime, threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you?’ Timothée Chalamet rocks up to A Complete Unknown’s London premiere on Lime bike

According to Lime’s parking rules, “parking your vehicle in No Parking zones is prohibited. No Parking zones are indicated by red shading with a no parking symbol.

“If you try to end your ride in a No Parking zone, the app will alert you of parking restrictions and help you locate nearby parking. Improperly parked vehicles may be subject to a warning or penalty.”

However, Lime’s current penalty structure ranges from £2 to £20, with no fines handed out for first-time offences, so it is unclear where the £65 fine the actor claims he was handed comes from.

Nevertheless, it turns out Chalamet wasn’t the only one of his entourage who fell foul of Lime’s rules and regulations.

Timothée Chalamet riding a bike on his way to 'A Complete Unknown' premiere in London!

🎥 giulliang | Instagram Stories pic.twitter.com/hZhakBocfd

— Timothée Chalamet Updates (@timotheeupdates) January 14, 2025

Photographer Aidan Zamiri, who rode alongside the actor on his own Lime bike, posting videos of the ride across Westminster Bridge and along the South Bank on social media with the captions ‘Favourite mode of transport’ and ‘Showing up in style’, was also penalised.

Zamiri’s ride was terminated by Lime due to an “unusually long idle time”, and he was later handed his own, rather more palatable, £2 fine for parking incorrectly.

Alright, hit that snare drum and get the Hammon organ pumping, all together now – and play it f***ing loud: ‘Once upon a time you rode a Lime, but then threw them a dime after being fined, didn’t you?’

I can see Timmy’s version of Like a Rolling Lime rocketing to the top of the Billboard charts now.

> “Can we do something about the problem of dockless car parking?” Cycling campaigners blast calls to ban Lime bikes from councils “that have done nothing on active travel for years”, as locals say hire bikes should be “crushed” amid parking concerns

Of course, Chalamet’s unauthorised red carpet fine isn’t the time that the issue of Lime bikes and parking has hit the headlines.

First launched in London in 2018, the ubiquitous dockless electric rental bikes – which unlike Santander Bikes don’t require a docking station – have attracted criticism from those who claim they are constantly abandoned by users and left “strewn” across pavements.

In 2023, residents in the west London borough of Hounslow claimed the bikes were “deliberately” left in “dangerous places”, with some locals calling for the trial of the bike hire scheme to be paused, arguing that it is only a matter of time before “somebody gets killed”.

In September 2024, Brent Council leader Muhammed Butt appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme to complain that the hire scheme’s dockless parking system was causing a “nuisance” in the borough, and that the bikes were “just being dumped on the streets, parks, rivers and canals, outside the high streets”.

And in November, the residents of a building in Kingston upon Thames used angle grinders to chop up a number of Lime bikes they claimed had been abandoned by “thoughtless” cyclists in a private car park.

“It’s just getting out of hand. I’ve had confrontations with the riders themselves, but they’re just not interested. We’ve lost our temper with it,” one resident said.

To reference another Dylan classic, ‘Johnny’s in the basement mixing up the medicine, the Lime bikes are on the pavement’… Actually, perhaps best not to go there.