Pop star Finley Quaye charged with slapping woman in street

The Sunday Shining singer from Leith is alleged to have launched into a drunken rage on a busy Leith Walk in October last year.

It is believed the father-of-two did not know the 36-year-old woman who made the complaint.

However, Lothian and Borders Police were unable to question the Brit Award winner following the alleged incident as he had gone on tour.

The 37-year-old Hibs fan was formally charged last month, with his lawyer present, at the Capital’s St Leonards police station.

The woman has also been charged with minor assault.

Quaye was brought up by his grandparents in the Leith area, not far from the scene of the alleged attack.

His mother Sharon McGowan died of a heroin overdose when he was ten years old. His father, Ghanaian-born jazz composer Cab Quaye, was not around during his childhood.

Quaye achieved huge success with his first album, Maverick A Strike, in 1997. It spawned the hit singles Sunday Shining, It’s Great When We’re Together and Even After All, and won him both MOBO and Brit gongs.

However, he was dropped by his record label and his career went downhill. In 1999, he checked into rehab at London’s Priory clinic following problems with alcohol and drugs but lasted just one week. Whilst there, he met and began dating TV presenter Paula Yates.

The relationship lasted just three months, despite Yates claiming they were going to get married. She died from a heroin overdose in 2000.

Quaye has released several albums since his heyday but has failed to set the charts alight again. In 2005, eight years after he won a Brit Award for his debut album Maverick A Strike, Quaye moved to Berlin to get away from the excesses of the British music scene.

In 2010 he was arrested for allegedly punching a barman and spitting at two women during a boozy pub row at the Queen’s gastro pub in Primrose Hill, north London.

The alleged attack was just the latest in a series of run-ins the temperamental star has had with the law since he shot to fame.

A spokeswoman for Lothian and Borders Police said: “A 37-year-old man has been charged following a minor assault that happened in Leith Walk on October 8. A report will be sent to the Procurator Fiscal.”