TikTok chef Thomas Straker has been fined £615 and banned from driving for six months after he was caught out by a cyclist as he made a phone call at the wheel of his Porsche 911.
The 33-year-old, who runs the eponymous restaurant Straker’s in Golborne Road in Notting Hill, was reported to police by Dr Noel Pollock after an incident near Marble Arch lastApril.
Dr Pollock was cycling through central London when he came across Straker’s Porsche in Cumberland Place, and captured the driver’s actions on a helmet-mounted camera.
“I witnessed this driver holding and using their illuminated mobile phone in their left hand while driving”, he said, in a witness statement.
“They were talking on a call while holding the phone.
“Presumably because they were distracted, or perhaps because they chose to, the video also shows them driving into and stopping in the advanced cycle box while the light was red.”
At Lavender Hill magistrates court last week, Straker was issued with a six-month driving ban and told to pay a £615 fine.
He received six penalty points for the phone incident and already had nine points on his licence from speeding tickets in 2021 and 2022, bringing him in line for an automatic disqualification.
Straker was also told to pay £110 costs and a £246 victim surcharge.
Known online as the ‘TikTok Butter Chef’, Straker was present in court to be sentenced, having been convicted in his absence in January of using a hand-held mobile phone.
The chef, who trained at the prestigious Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland, has become a global Internet sensation with his videos featuring different flavours of butter.
Last year, he named Chicken Tikka Masala as his top butter flavouring of 2023.
The son of a Cordon Bleu-trained chef and a former SAS commander, Straker launched his restaurant in 2022 after a string of roles in London’s top restaurants.
In November last year, Straker was rumoured to have had an affair with Princess Maria-Olympia of Greece, leading to news reports that his actress wife Davina – the mother of his two children – had kicked him out of the family home.
He was also at the centre of a social media storm last summer when he posted a picture of his eight-strong “chef team”, who were all male and all white, a story first covered by the Standard.
Straker apologised for his initial response to the controversy by saying “people need to calm down”, and he went on to say: “I am absolutely committed to ensuring diversity in my restaurants, unfortunately we aren’t achieving this in my kitchens currently and this is an area I know I need to improve on, making sure it is seen as a welcoming and approachable environment for all.”
When the case against him was first launched via the Single Justice Procedure, a lawyer for Straker wrote to the court to accept the chef was guilty of the offence.
