The chilling 999 call Joey Barton’s wife made to police has been played at his assault trial, as the former footballer is accused of kicking her in the head during a drunken row.
Barton, 42, is accused of assaulting Georgia Barton, 38, at their home in Kew, south-west London in June 2021, where they had been drinking with two other couples while their children slept upstairs.
Mrs Barton called the police shortly after 11pm to ‘report she had been hit by her husband’, the court heard.
The pair had both drunk ‘four or five bottles of wine’, a previous hearing was told. Barton has denied pushing his wife to the floor before kicking her.
During the 999 call played to the court, a tearful Mrs Barton told the call handler: ‘Me husband’s just hit me in the house. He’s in the house, I’m outside.’
Asked if anything similar had happened before, she said: ‘No, it’s the first time,’ adding that she had been hit ‘in the face’.
When police arrived at around 11:30pm, Mrs Barton told them: ‘I’ve been pushed down and kicked about and stuff.
‘He said he was going to fight with my brother and my dad.’
Barton is alleged to have drunk up to five bottles of wine before launching the assault on his wife, leaving her with a ‘golf-sized’ lump on her head and a bloody nose, a court heard today.
He was pictured outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court this morning with his wife, who did not support the prosecution, for a new hearing after a previous trial was halted in 2022 when Mrs Barton retracted her claims.
Giving evidence, he admitted he is sometimes ‘one to lose his temper’ but denied kicking his wife in the head, saying there would have been ‘a lot more damage’ if he had.
Friends were forced to intervene in the argument between the pair on June 2, pulling Barton away from his wife, prosecutors say.
The arguing had started after Barton threatened to fight his wife’s brother and father, Westminster Magistrates’ Court heard.
‘There had been a verbal disagreement about a family matter,’ prosecutor Helena Duong said.
Barton – who appeared in court wearing a dark coat, dark jumper, jeans and glasses – ‘grabbed her and pushed her to the ground and kicked her in the head’, Ms Duong said.
As a friend tried to intervene, Barton ‘threw’ him off and said ‘don’t disrespect me’, the trial heard.
In bodycam footage played Mrs Barton says: ‘He’s got [my] head (and) pushed me down.’
The officer at the scene was heard telling a colleague that Ms Barton had a ‘good lump on the side of her head’.
A second piece of body-worn footage showed Ms Barton confirm her account to a different police officer.
A police officer asked Mrs Barton if she wanted to use an ice pack for the ‘bump’ on her head, the court heard.
Barton was arrested at around midnight in his bedroom, where he had been asleep, and was still drunk, the trial was told.
Giving evidence on Friday, Barton said he had consumed ‘six to eight’ drinks with friends before arriving home at about 6.30pm.
‘A couple of our friends got into a disagreement,’ he said. ‘That led to us having a disagreement. I stupidly took me mate’s side, I said his wife was out of order.
‘We just got into petty name calling. We ended up getting a bit more agitated and were close to each other.’
Barton told the court a friend had come between him and his wife to separate them, but denied that anything ‘physical’ had happened.
Ms Duong asked Barton: ‘Are you someone that on occasion might lose your temper?’
‘Yep,’ the former footballer replied.
Asked if he had kicked his wife, he said no, before adding: ‘If I kicked someone in the head there would be a lot more damage than what’s alleged in this case.’
Mrs Barton told the court she and her husband had been ‘nose-to-nose at one point’, but had not come to blows.
‘There was a lot of wine drunk by myself that day.
‘I felt a collision to my head which stunned me and made me fall backwards,’ she said. It couldn’t have been Joe, he was too far away.’
Mrs Barton said a friend later told the group: ‘Joe’s pushed her down, Joe’s hit her, Joe’s kicked her, you need to ring the police.
‘I just repeated on the phone what she had said.’
In 2022, a judge ordered that proceedings be paused over concerns a trial would be unfair to Barton after prosecutors said they did not plan to ask Mrs Barton to give evidence in court.
Mrs Barton had written to prosecutors a month before the original planned trial and said the injury was an accident and came after she and her husband had both drank ‘four to five’ bottles of wine.
She claimed in her letter that her injuries occurred after friends tried to intervene in an argument between the pair.
‘I’m not a victim… I want to move on with my life,’ she said.
‘The reality is that that letter was an attempt to protect your husband,’ Ms Duong said today.
But last year, two senior judges ruled the decision to halt the trial was wrong after the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Stephen Parkinson, appealed against the decision at the High Court in London.
In a 20-page ruling, Dame Victoria Sharp said the previous judge’s decision ‘was wrong in principle’.
Barton had denied a charge of assault by beating after being arrested by police at his home.
The incident, on June 2, 2021, was brought to the attention of police when Mrs Barton made a 999 call to officers just before 11.15pm.
Last year, broadcaster Jeremy Vine sued Barton for libel and harassment over 14 online posts, including one where he called Mr Vine a ‘big bike nonce’ and a ‘pedo defender’ on X, formerly Twitter.
Earlier this year, he appeared in court charged with sending offensive messages to Vine and commentator Lucy Ward.
The couple married in 2019 in Oxfordshire and have two children together.
Barton played for teams including Manchester City, Newcastle, Queen’s Park Rangers and Marseille, as well as making one appearance for England in 2007.
The trial will continue on March 25.