The clock has run out on “24” — but not on Kiefer Sutherland‘s thirst for rough-and-tumble action. The hard-partying star was drunk, disorderly and shirtless at 4 a.m. yesterday as four huge bodyguards dragged him out of a London strip club and threw him into a car.
Sutherland — who’s finished filming the eighth and final season of the hit series, which has six episodes yet to air — started the evening at the bar of the Covent Garden Hotel, where he sampled several different wines, with empty stemmed glasses lined up in front of him.
“Eventually a mate showed up and in between drinks, they popped outside for a ciggie,” a witness said. “Kiefer carried on drinking in the bar till 2 a.m. He was then driven to Stringfellow’s Gentlemen’s Club.”
Photos taken about two hours later show a shirtless Sutherland, looking nothing like Jack Bauer, being thrown out the back door of the mammary mecca by four tuxedo-clad bouncers, one of whom had him in a headlock. He was shoved into the back seat of a car and brought back to his hotel, where staff helped him to his room.
Sutherland’s lawyer and publicist did not return calls seeking comment. But it was hardly the first time Sutherland has gotten rowdy after a few too many drinks.
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Last May, he apologized to fashion designer Jack McCullaugh after head-butting him at the SubMercer lounge after the Metropolitan Museum of Art fashion gala. In 2007, he spent 48 days in jail in Los Angeles for his second drunken-driving arrest.
“It’s been the biggest problem for me,” Sutherland told Rolling Stone the year before. “I have a few drinks and I’m not so worried about tomorrow and not thinking about yesterday. I am in this moment and I don’t give a [bleep] about anything else, and that’s that. It’s right out of the textbook on problem drinkers.”