Blue singer Lee Ryan has been been given a 12-month suspended prison sentence for ‘racially aggravated common assault’ after calling black flight attendant a ‘chocolate cookie’, telling her ‘I want your chocolate children’, and asking her to kiss him while he was drunk on a British Airways flight from Glasgow to London in July last year.

He had earlier pleaded guilty to being drunk on an aircraft (who even knew that was a crime?), for which he was handed a four-month jail term to run concurrently.

As reported by Metro, Ryan had drunk a bottle of port in the airport lounge and was then refused more alcohol on the plane. When told to return to his seat, Ryan called flight attendant Leah Gordon a ‘chocolate cookie’ before grabbing her wrists. Gordon told the court:

‘He was making comments about my complexion, “You’re my chocolate darling, my chocolate cookie”, and “I’m going to have your chocolate children”.’

Ryan has been ordered to pay £2,500 compensation to Ms Gordon, £750 to Jade Smith, another member of the cabin crew, and £510 in costs. Earlier this year, he had taken to the stand to insist his comments were just banter:

‘I’m sorry. My band member is black, I’m not racist, I’ve had black girlfriends, mixed-race girlfriends. It was banter, just drunk banter I suppose, there was no malice or intention to upset anyone.’

I didn’t mean to cause any distress to anyone or be racist, it was just a poor choice of words I suppose.

I am sorry that I touched her, but that’s all I did, touch her lightly, by her admission.’

A different flight attendant said she had been approached by Ryan shortly after the plane took off, and he had asked to be upgraded from economy to business class. On a one hour flight? You bet:

“He told me he had a problem, that he was being harassed by other passengers, that he was famous and asked did I know who he was. He was angry, saying he was a gold-card holder and that he needed to be moved because of this.”

I kinda feel bad for Lee Ryan because it definitely was just banter in his mind, but at the same time you can’t be getting so hammered that you end up harassing women and putting your hands on them, on land or 30,000 feet up in the sky. I wonder if he at least managed a little chuckle when the judge entered and they said, ‘all rise’?

For the backlash Lee faced while pushing Covid conspiracy theories a couple years back, click HERE.