A FORMER soldier is behind bars for taking a friend’s sports car while she slept after a drinking session – when he was on a suspended sentence.

William Cowley was told by a judge that he could not be given another chance when he had already twice breached the prison term hanging over him.

The unemployed 23-year-old raised eyebrows when he turned up at his temporary lodgings in Middlesbrough in a white Audi convertible in December.

A supervising officer at the accommodation challenged Cowley about the motor because he had told him just that week that he was banned from driving.

Teesside Crown Court heard that the man approached him and asked him if the car belonged to him - and Cowley said he did not know who the owner was.

Prosecutor Jenny Haigh said Cowley explained he had been at the home of someone in Ingleby Barwick, near Stockton, but could not remember exactly where from.

The officer asked him six times for the keys but he refused, and he seemed to be under the influence of alcohol because his speech was slurred.

After police were called, he was breathalysed and was nearly double the legal limit with a reading of 66 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath.

In an interview later, he said that he had been out with a friend, went back to her house where she opened a bottle of wine, shared a drink and went to bed.

Cowley said he drank some more before he took the keys and drove off in the car, and pulled up outside his lodgings in Park Road North in the early hours.

Miss Haigh said Cowley was a disqualified driver and he was in breach of a suspended 20-month jail sentence for robbing a woman of £300 in her home.

Garry Wood, mitigating, said Cowley had turned to drink after he was dishonourably discharged from the army, and was keen to seek help for his problems.

He was jailed for 14 months and banned for three years after he admitted taking a vehicle without consent, driving while disqualified, excess alcohol and having no licence.