A dry liner who failed to get his conviction for driving while using his mobile phone overturned ended up having two months added to his roads ban.

After a judge and two magistrates threw out the appeal, Aaron Taylor, 43, tried to avoid a driving disqualification by arguing he would face exceptional hardship.

He told Swindon Crown Court he wouldn’t be able to pick up his children, who live in Rodbourne and on the old Wroughton airfield site, travel to work or take his grandmother out if he lost his licence.

That earned him a rebuke from Judge Jason Taylor QC.

Banning the defendant for 20 months and ordering him to pay the Crown Prosecution Service’s £520 appeal costs, the judge said: “Disqualification is meant to involve hardship. None of the evidence given by Mr Taylor suggests to us there is anything even approaching the high threshold of exceptional hardship.”

The court heard Taylor was behind the wheel of a Ford Transit van on County Road when he was spotted with a black mobile phone to his ear by PC Craig Head, who was parked up opposite Bathurst Road at around lunchtime on April 13 last year.

PC Head told the bench he had followed in his marked police car and then pulled the Transit over on Bridge End Road.

He said Taylor had told him the phone had been on speaker phone.

The police officer, who last year earned praise as one of the first on the scene of what ended up a two-hour armed siege in Lower Stratton, went off to his patrol car to fill in a ticket for the offence.

When he returned it was claimed Taylor’s teen son said he had been holding the phone.

The officer was accused of asking the boy why he was lying for his dad, at which the youngster went pale.

Taylor, who was representing himself, told the police officer during the hearing that his son had felt intimidated by the words. The boy was not at court to give evidence.

Putting himself in the witness stand, the Transit driver said his partner had called while he was in the van with his son.

He asked the boy to put the call on speakerphone. The phone had been put on the dashboard and was inaccessible from where he was sitting in the driving seat. He added he had been driving with both hands on the steering wheel.

Under cross-examination from prosecutor Chloe Hucker, Taylor said he didn’t understand how the officer could have seen him with his hand to his face.

“The only think I could think of is when I’m driving I suffer with bad skin and I itch my neck now and then.”

Taylor was due to stand trial at the magistrates’ court last October. The case was proved in his absence when he failed to show-up.

He told the judge this week he had been working in London at the time, had tried to contact the court but could not get through, and feared losing the contract if he skipped work for court.

Throwing out the appeal, Judge Taylor said the bench had found the defendant’s account unconvincing and fanciful.

The court heard Taylor was given a driving ban in 2016 after totting up 12 penalty points. Magistrates gave him six points for the mobile phone offence last year, resulting in a second ban under the totting up rules.

The judge upped the 18-month ban he received last year to 20 months.

He already had to pay a £220 fine, £30 victim surcharge and £85 costs as part of his sentence last October and the judge ordered he pay the full £520 costs of the appeal.

Taylor, of Alexander Way, Shrivenham, told the judge: “I just don’t understand how you can come to a conclusion with the hardship when my kids are going to suffer.”

Judge Taylor replied: “You were driving on your phone.”

The unhappy defendant said: “I wasn’t driving on my phone. You’ve convicted me of driving on my phone but I wasn’t.”