David Mellor could be banned from London taxis after his expletive-ridden rant at black cab driver says union boss
- Former cabinet member said: 'Shut the f*** up. Smart-arsed little b******'
- Taxi drivers are now threatening to refuse to pick up Mr Mellor, said union
- London taxi branch of RMT considering a formal boycott of Mr Mellor
- General secretary Mike Cash says rant was 'pompous and disgraceful'
- Adds that 'snobbish verbal assault' has 'echoes of the Plebgate row'
London taxi drivers are considering banning former Cabinet minister David Mellor from their cabs after he was caught on tape describing one as a 'sweaty, stupid little s***'.
The Tory grandee was secretly recorded as he launched an expletive-ridden tirade at the driver during a row about the route he wanted to take following a visit to Buckingham Palace with his partner who had just been awarded a CBE.
Mr Mellor, 65, later said he regretted losing his temper at the driver, adding he had been 'seriously provoked', but the London taxi branch of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union has said it is considering a formal boycott of the former politician.
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Row: Former Cabinet minister David Mellor, 65, was caught having a foul-mouthed rant at a taxi driver after leaving Buckingham Palace where his partner Lady Cobham had been awarded a CBE (together above)
Boycott: RMT general secretary Mick Cash (left) says London taxi drivers are considering a formal boycott of ex-minister David Mellor (right) after he was caught on tape describing one as a 'sweaty, stupid little s***'
The RMT's general secretary Mick Cash also said the row had echoes of the 'Plebgate' incident involving former chief whip Andrew Mitchell.
'It is no surprise that our black cab members across London are considering a boycott of the Tory toff David Mellor over his outrageous, pompous and disgraceful tirade against one of their colleagues,' said Mr Cash.
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'His sneering and snobbish verbal assault says it all about the elite that run this country and their attitude towards the working classes that they expect to transport them.
'Taxi drivers have a tough enough job already, dealing with ill-conceived and damaging regulations handed down by the mayor Boris Johnson, confronting illegal touting and navigating around the congested streets of London and at least the Mellor tirade has poured some light on the kind of aggravation our members experience day in and day out.
Fall out: Mr Mellor lost his temper because he believed the taxi driver was taking the wrong route home to St Katharine Docks near Tower Bridge from Buckingham Palace. The incident occurred at rush-hour on Friday
Partners: David Mellor and Lady Cobham were being taken by the driver back to his £8million riverside home
Admission: Mr Mellor has said he regrets losing his temper with the driver but maintained the cabbie provoked him. His career as a minister was ended by scandal including an affair, reported in the Mail in 1992
'To subject a taxi driver to a volley of aggressive abuse, and threatening to use his position to name the driver on his radio show, is frankly disgusting and intimidating and has distinct echoes of the Plebgate row. RMT is in consultation with our taxi members over the possibility of a boycott of this obnoxious and abusive character.'
Many black cab drivers have already refused to pick up Mr Mellor, and drivers at a rank outside his £8million London home told The Times he was a 'notorious moaner'.
'He's well known for being rude,' said one driver, Mark Reeves.
GMB professional drivers branch president Simon Rush called for a public apology from Mellor, adding: 'Whatever the reason for this loutish verbal attack on a working person by this politician, it is unacceptable behaviour, not only on the road but in any workplace. This is not the first time we have seen arrogance and conceit from Mr Mellor. A public apology from Mr Mellor is in order.
'It doesn't seem to matter how long you have been a fully qualified and experienced taxi or private hire driver, some of your passengers think they know better than you do.
MELLOR'S MELTDOWNS: HOW THE FORMER TORY MINISTER HAS PREVIOUSLY FLOWN INTO A FIT OF RAGE WITH CHEFS AND BORDER GUARDS
David Mellor's outburst in a London black cab is not the first time he has been claimed to have ranted in public.
On one occasion he told a terrified chef he should 'do his £10-an-hour job somewhere else' during a foul-mouthed outburst at staff of a restaurant near his home, it is claimed.
The former Secretary of State for National Heritage is said to have launched the rant - during which he called the chef a 'fat b******' - at workers in the establishment just a stone's throw from his plush riverside home.
Mr Mellor, who was known as the Minister for Fun and was famously caught cavorting with mistress Antonia de Sancha in 1992, right, lives in a 19thcentury listed building in exclusive St Katharine's Dock, London, with partner Penelope, Viscountess Cobham.
The garden of the property, just a short distance from Tower Bridge, is overlooked by a balcony which forms part of the River Lounge Italian restaurant.
Mr Mellor applied for the venue's licence to be reviewed and it ended up in court in 2010.
District Judge Dawson said he had 'the gist' of what was said on the tape, but that it was 'not relevant to the proceedings'.
But after the hearing, at which a compromise was reached between the two parties allowing the venue to keep its licence, a court insider, said: 'It was very offensive to the people in question - a chef and a waitress - and is dynamite stuff.
'It's a shame the court couldn't hear it - it really made Mr Mellor out to be a tyrant.
'He called the chef a fat b****** and told him to get a proper job, telling him to 'go and work somewhere else for £10 an hour'.'
In the same year he and his quango-queen partner Viscountess Cobham, fell foul of the UK Border Agency, as two uniformed officers — with a third looking on — decided to grill Mellor about the contents of his wallet.
The politician turned broadcaster, music critic and business adviser was stopped by the officers at London's City Airport as he attempted to board a flight to Nice in the South of France.
He was asked if he was carrying £1,000 or more in cash.
Mellor told the Mail: 'I replied: 'I am not, but what if I was?' I was then curtly informed that under the terms of the Proceeds of Crime Act — one of the hundreds of criminal justice Bills brought in by the last Labour government — they were entitled to enquire about the source of the cash.'
The former MP is furious about the request. 'Why should some uniformed jobsworth be entitled to demand to know where I got my money from?' he says. 'They are making law-abiding citizens prima facie crime suspects. Yet I imagine families routinely take £1,000 away with them on a two or three-week holiday, in case their credit cards are not accepted for some reason.
'It is just another opportunity to interfere in the liberties of ordinary people, another step on the road to becoming a police state. It is a daft, intrusive, needle-in-a-haystack operation, and nothing to do with controlling serious crime.'
'People are using their mobiles to tell you which route to follow and sadly this often leads to abuse of the driver. The implication is that you are dishonest when in fact you will be taking the quickest route based on your accumulated knowledge of all the factors such as time of day, traffic flow, road works etc, none of which the maps software will take in to account.'
Mr Mellor, who had accompanied his partner, VisitEngland chairman Viscountess Penelope Cobham, to an Investiture ceremony with the Prince of Wales, was heard in a mobile phone recording given to The Sun.
He told the paper the driver, who is not named but is described as a 38-year-old from south-east London, had provoked him.
'This man seriously provoked me and ruined a wonderful day,' he said.
'Once I had lost my temper, which I regret, he then secretly recorded me. I will leave the public to judge his actions.'
The paper reported that Mr Mellor – once nicknamed the Minister of Fun – accused the driver of not taking the quickest route to their destination in east London during rush hour.
During the audio Mr Mellor said he would name him and discuss the incident on his LBC radio show, which he co-presents with former London mayor Ken Livingstone on Saturday mornings.
Magic moment: Penelope, Viscountess Cobham is given her CBE by the Prince of Wales at Buckingham Palace but her partner David Mellor said her day was ruined after the incident with the taxi driver afterwards
Listing his life's achievements, he also said: 'You've been driving a cab for 10 years, I've been in the Cabinet, I'm an award-winning broadcaster, I'm a Queen's Counsel. You think that your experiences are anything compared to mine?'
His foul-mouthed attack apparently upset Lady Cobham, who accused Mr Mellor of ruining her special day.
The recording emerged following the sacking of Labour frontbencher Emily Thornberry for apparently sneering at a white van man.
The morning after the rant at the taxi driver Mr Mellor spoke on his LBC show and apparently did not carry out his threat to name the driver – but he did assert that he would not belittle a working class man ‘even for a single millisecond’ and said he could not fathom how Miss Thornberry could have ‘sneered’ at someone and been so ‘patronising’.
Much of the show was dedicated to discussions about Miss Thornberry who, while campaigning in Rochester, tweeted a picture of cage-fighter Daniel Ware’s home decorated with English flags.
‘She was stupid,’ Mellor told his listeners. ‘For her to go sneering at that. I can’t think whatever possessed her to do it.’
Controversy: The recording of Mr Mellor emerged following the sacking of Labour frontbencher Emily Thornberry (left) for apparently sneering at a white van man in the north of England via twitter (right)
On Friday Mr Mellor and Lady Cobham, who is the chairman of VisitEngland, attended an Investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace, where Lady Cobham was presented with a CBE by Prince Charles for services to tourism.
They left and picked up a cab at 5.50pm outside the upmarket Orrery restaurant in Marylebone High Street, central London, from where they were driven five miles to St Katharine Docks, near Tower Bridge, where the couple live in a 19th century listed house overlooking the Thames.
The driver, who has asked not to be named, said Mr Mellor began to challenge him on the route he had taken after five minutes.
When the argument became heated, the driver began to record the conversation on his phone.
Mr Mellor threatened to name and shame the driver on his show before paying the £29 fare with a £50 note and leaving no tip.
The cab driver, a 38-year-old from South East London, who earns £28,000 a year, told the Sun: ‘In my job you get spoken badly to all the time. But I’ve never been on the receiving end of anything like this.
‘Mr Mellor made me feel like I am something he’d found on the bottom of his shoe. He spoke down to me like I am a second-class citizen.’
The driver added: ‘Politicians say they are in touch with ordinary, hard-working people, but he hasn’t got a clue.’
Mr Mellor studied at Cambridge University and was a Tory MP for almost two decades and served as chief secretary to the Treasury and secretary for national heritage under John Major.
MELLOR WAS ONE OF SEVERAL OF JOHN MAJOR'S MPS TO HAVE AN AFFAIR
Mistress: Antonia de Sancha
In 1992 David Mellor was the first in a long line of Tory politicians to fall victim to weaknesses of the flesh under John Major’s premiership.
Major himself had already secretly pursued an extra-marital liaison with fellow Minister Edwina Currie.
As the story emerged, the then 43-year-old Mellor became known to an amused public as the ‘Minister for Fun’ - his official title was actually Secretary of State for National Heritage.
Meanwhile, his mistress Antonia de Sancha's photograph was plastered over the front pages of newspapers and displayed on prime-time TV.
The daughter of a Spanish film producer and Swedish mother, middle-class Antonia, was dubbed a ‘soft-porn actress’ after it was revealed she had, in her 20s, played a one-legged prostitute in a film called The Pieman in which she had simulated sex with a pizza delivery man.
Speaking last year in depth for the first time about the notorious affair, she confessed she was ‘heartbroken and in shock’ when it ended.
Mellor quickly claimed to be patching up his ‘troubled’ marriage to his long-suffering then wife, Judith, stopped taking Antonia’s calls and gave her the brush-off, she said.
'He never spoke to me again from the moment the affair became public. What was worse, he made it clear that he thought I was to blame for the fact the story leaked — in fact, it was someone I knew but was not close to.
‘Now I realise that he was desperate to save his political career, although it was terrible for me at the time. I was dealing with the end of a real love affair and it took me months, if not years, to recover from it.’
Mellor subsequently divorced his wife and quit his Cabinet job after it was revealed he had accepted a free holiday from the daughter of a Palestinian Liberation Organisation official.
But he was forced to abandon his ministerial career after having an affair with mistress Antonia de Sancha in 1992.
She claimed at the time that they made love while he wore his blue Chelsea football strip, which she has since denied.
Mr Major briefly continued to support him – and Mr Mellor initially claimed to be trying to patch up his marriage to his then wife Judith and posed with her and their two sons for a photo-shoot.
He later divorced and lost his Cabinet job after it emerged he had accepted a free holiday from Mona Bauwens, the daughter of a Palestinian Liberation Organisation official. Mr Mellor has been with Lady Cobham for around 20 years.
He was previously caught on tape four years ago shouting at a chef near his home, mocking the foreign worker for his ‘ten quid an hour job’.
Big day: Former MP Mr Mellor was with his partner at Buckingham Palace (left) and was heading home to a luxury development at St Katharine's Docks on the edge of the City of London (right) when the rant occurred
Backlash: The leaked tape of the foul-mouthed row has led to Mr Mellor being widely condemned on Twitter
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