A POLICE officer who was once named Britain's bravest bobby for disarming a gunman in Worcester, has been banned from driving for more than two years.

A court heard yesterday that PC Ian Fielding drove two cars, including a patrol vehicle, while twice the legal drink-drive limit following a party to celebrate his promotion to the helicopter squad.

On January 7, 2006, the 44-year-old first crashed his Ford Focus down an embankment and then went back to West Mercia Police's training headquarters in Hindlip, near Worcester, to get a marked Mitsubishi Shogun to retrieve his car.

Fielding, who has been in the force for 23 years, had arranged to sleep at the training centre instead of returning to his Bridgnorth home but decided he wanted to be with his wife at home.

The father-of-two returned with the police car but he was spotted by a colleague who had been called to the scene.

Fielding drove off and was pursued by the officer but after a while he returned and handed himself in.

A breath test found he had 79mcg of alcohol in 100ml of breath. The legal limit 35mcg. He was banned from driving for 30 months and ordered to do 200 hours community work.

Shane Crawford, defending, told Shrewsbury Magistrates Court, that Fielding suffered post traumatic stress following the incident. Also, two close family members had died months before the crash.

He said: "This was a fall from grace of quite spectacular proportion. He had up until this point had an exemplary record."

District Judge Bruce Morgan said a custodial sentence was unnecessary as Fielding had suffered enough. He said: "It is quite clear one moment this officer was the hero of the hour and in a very short space of time he now may be considered to be a villain."

In December 2001 PC Fielding rugby tackled Alex Warden, of Avon Road Tolladine, who was waving a handgun and terrorising Christmas shoppers.

West Mercia Constabulary said it was aware of the court case but it did not want to comment as an internal inquiry was under way.