Blue singer Lee Ryan loses plane assault appeal

Blue singer Lee Ryan has lost a High Court challenge to his conviction for a racially aggravated assault on a flight attendant.

Ryan, 43, had drunk a bottle of port before a British Airways flight from Glasgow to London City Airport in July 2022 and was slurring his words and staggering around, his trial heard.

After being refused more alcohol and being told to sit down, he made remarks about cabin crew member Leah Gordon's appearance, calling her a "chocolate cookie" and grabbing her wrists.

He was given a 12-month suspended prison sentence at Isleworth Crown Court in September 2023.

Ryan had been found guilty at Ealing Magistrates' Court that January of racially aggravated common assault and of behaving in an abusive way towards a member of cabin crew.

The pop star appealed against his convictions at the Crown Court, where the challenge was partly dismissed but a judge later refused to refer the case to the High Court, ruling that the application was frivolous.

Ryan then brought a separate challenge at the High Court against that refusal. On Tuesday, Lord Justice Holgate and Mr Justice Johnson dismissed it.

The judges noted that Ryan's appeal against his convictions had been heard in November 2023, when his sentence was set aside.

In November 2024, a judge sitting with two magistrates allowed the singer's appeal against a conviction for threatening a member of aircraft crew, but rejected his appeal against the assault conviction.

The court found an inconsistency in Ryan's evidence over whether he had grabbed or only touched Ms Gordon's wrists. He told the court he had been misled by police.

His lawyers argued that the Crown Court judge who declined to refer the case had wrongly drawn an adverse inference from his police interview.

Rejecting that argument, the two High Court judges said the Crown Court's task had been to weigh the competing accounts given by Gordon and Ryan.

They said: "In doing so, it was entitled to rely on the inconsistency between Mr Ryan's account in interview, which coincided with Ms Gordon's allegation that he had grabbed her wrists, and the account he gave in evidence.

"The essential reasoning of the court was that it believed Ms Gordon, who had been sober at the time and who was a consistent and compelling witness, and they disbelieved Mr Ryan who had been drunk at the time and had been inconsistent."

The judges found no error in the decision not to refer the case to the High Court. Ryan will now return to court to be sentenced.

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