<<Print>>

A JUDGE assaulted his wife after she kept him waiting for his TEA, a court heard yesterday. Cops raced to the luxury home of deputy High Court judge James Allen, QC, after a frantic 999 call. He had fled when officers arrived but they found his wife Melanie, a deputy county coroner, with her face swollen and bruises round her eyes. Allen was later charged with assault.When he appeared before magistrates in Bradford, West Yorks, he denied the charge - but admitted they had argued because she kept him waiting for 90 minutes for his evening meal. The judge, 61, said he was "irritable" that his wife had been talking to their cleaner. He told the court: "When I entered the kitchen I said to my wife I was not happy. "I had been upstairs for an hour and a half and I had had nothing to eat all day." But he denied hitting his wife, claiming she punched HERSELF in the face in an effort to stop him walking out of the house near Wakefield.