Trapped in car park after Still Game performance

Alan McCartney, 34, was trapped in the car park for hours in a massive gridlock when he should have been at home by 7pm under a court curfew.

At Lanark Sheriff Court, he accepted he had been out during the curfew in November, but his solicitor put forward a defence of reasonable excuse.

“It took him two hours to get out of a car park,” he said.

McCartney, of Nellfield Lane, had taken his son to a matinee performance of Still Game that afternoon but had been unable to leave the car park afterwards.

The solicitor produced a parking ticket, put through the machine at 5.40pm as McCartney went to leave, and he passed McCartney’s phone up to the sheriff showing a photo of him leaving the car park at 7.32pm.

“After he got the ticket, he went to the car and was stuck in the car park for about two hours,” he said.

The audience was coming in for the evening performance of Still Game, and there was an agricultural show at the adjoining Scottish Event Campus. “The traffic was absolutely gridlocked,” he said.

Sheriff Nikola Stewart accepted that without even hearing evidence from Mc Cartney and found no breach of the order.