A FORMER radio presenter is to become Britain’s first blind magistrates’ chairman.

Saltburn-born Mark Turnbull, who is a magistrate on Teesside, will attend a twoday course in September before undergoing six qualifying assessment sessions.

“You can really say justice is blind,” joked the 47-year-old, who spent 18 years as a journalist and producer with BBC Radio Cleveland – since renamed BBC Tees.

“Whatever I do, I want to be the best at. I don’t know whether it is because of being blind, or because the school I attended pushed you, or because I am naturally cocky,”

said Mr Turnbull, who was born blind.

He left his job with BBC Tees in 2008 after presenting The Early Breakfast Show and the religious programme on Sunday mornings.

During his year in office as president of the National Union of Journalists, he protested – successfully – to Derry Irvine, the then Lord Chancellor to Prime Minister Tony Blair, about blind people being barred from becoming magistrates.

There are now about a dozen registered blind magistrates in Britain, but no blind chairmen.

Mr Turnbull, who worked as a freelance court and sports reporter and for The Northern Echo and its sister paper, Darlington and Stockton Times, before joining BBC Radio Cleveland in 1991, said: “I believe in public service, which is why I worked for the BBC, and being a magistrate is public service.”

But while being blind is no handicap, it can be misinterpreted.

“One defendant once accused me of being asleep. I assured him he was wrong as he was marched away to prison,”

he recalled.

Magistrate Keith Armstrong, chairman of the South Cleveland Advisory Committee, responsible for magistrates’ recruitment, said: “I am very pleased that Mark is now going forward for his chairmanship training.

“It’s important that magistrates are made up from the broadest possible spectrum of experience, and Mark’s experiences of life enhance his contribution to the work of the bench.”

Sian Jones , Justices’ Clerk for the Teesside Bench and responsible for magistrates’ training, said: “Blindness is not an obstacle to a person being a magistrate.

“Most of the work of a magistrates’ chairman involves listening to people, making decisions and explaining them clearly.”