'Blind drunk' patron was actually just blind

A grandmother was furious when a bouncer told her she was "blind drunk" when he kicked her out of a pub in Australia's Northern Territory. In fact, Pearl Kelly, 60, is legally blind. She said bar staff at The Hub in the Palmerston Sports Club thought she was drunk because her eyes weren't focused at about midnight on January 11.

She said when she tried to explain she was blind, a security guard responded: "Yeah, blind drunk." The club's general manager, Pam Mienert, denied her bouncers would speak to patrons in that manner. "There's no way our staff would say that," she said. Ms Mienert said it was important for people with disabilities to flag it with staff when they entered the club so they could be catered for.



"She had no white stick, she wasn't wearing dark glasses and she didn't have a guide dog," she said. "How are staff supposed to know?" But Ms Kelly - who was at the club with a friend from Kununurra, Western Australia - said she shouldn't have to announce her disability every time she goes out. She said it was the third time in six years she had been booted out of the pub.

But Ms Mienert said: "They don't see it from our perspective. We're in such a hard position because we have so many members and unless they identify they have a problem, we can't help them." The club came under fire last week when Mark Bentley, 48, said he was kicked out of the pub for being too drunk - but he had Parkinson's disease. Ms Mienert said the two incidents were related because both patrons did not tell staff of their conditions.